We address long-standing concerns in the literature on compensating wage differentials: the econometric properties of the estimated value of statistical life (VSL) and the wide range of such estimates. We confront prominent econometric issues using panel data, a more accurate fatality risk...

An income tax provides implicit insurance by dampening the variability of disposable income and consumption. Using an empirical framework derived from the consumption insurance literature and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics we examine the effect of federal income tax reforms of the...

We estimate the incentive effects of income taxation in a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply without intratemporal strong separability. We find that consumption and hours worked are direct complements in utility; both increase with a compensated increase in the net wage. The...

A prominent theoretical controversy in the compensating differentials literature concerns unobservable individual productivity. Competing models yield opposite predictions depending on whether the unobservable productivity is safety-related skill or productivity generally. Using five panel waves...

Our research examines empirically the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle...

We examine the importance of possible nonrandom attrition to an econometric model of life cycle labor supply using both a Wald test comparing attriters to nonattriters and variable addition tests based on formal models of attrition. Estimates using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics show that...