The most enduring measure of how individuals make personal decisions affecting their health and safety is the compensating wage differential for job safety risk revealed in the labor market via hedonic equilibrium outcomes. The decisions in turn reveal the value of a statistical life (VSL), the...

The fatality risk-money tradeoff that is the value of a statistical life (VSL) may vary with the nature of the fatality event. While all fatalities involve loss of future life expectancy, the morbidity effects and their duration may differ. This article analyzes fatality risks accompanied by...

The standard literature on the value of life relies on Yaari's (1965) model, which includes an implicit assumption of risk neutrality with respect to life duration. To overpass this limitation, we extend the theory to a simple variety of nonadditively separable preferences. The enlargement we...

Labor market estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) using the Census of Fatal Occupational Injury (CFOI) data take advantage of this more accurate fatality data and the capability to construct more refined measures of worker fatality risks. This paper reviews all labor market VSL...

In evaluating whether a proposed regulation will have net benefits, economists often conduct a cost-benefit analysis. For regulations that are likely to impact human life and safety, that can involve putting a dollar value on human lives that may be saved or lost. A common way to do this is...

We study the impact of health insurance expansion in the US on health expenditure, longevity growth and welfare in an overlapping generations economy in which individuals purchase health care to lower mortality. We consider three sectors: final goods production; a health care sector, selling...

Notwithstanding the general acceptance of the value of statistical life (VSL) estimates for policy assessment purposes, several important unresolved issues remain. First, the results from revealed preference studies are systematically higher than those from stated preference studies, potentially...

The tradeoff between money and small risks of death is the value of statistical life (VSL), which has become the standard for assessing the benefits of risk and environmental regulations. Labor market estimates of the VSL average about $7 million. This valuation amount rises with age and then...

Valuing a change in the risk of death is a key input into the calculation of the benefits of environmental policies that save lives. Typically such risks are monetized using the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL). Because the majority of the lives saved by environmental policies are those of...