This paper accounts for the value of children and future generations in the evaluation of health policies. This is achieved through the incorporation of altruism and fertility in a "value of life" type of framework. We are able to express adults' willingness to pay for changes in child mortality...

We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost...

We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost...

Public health experts have been predicting imminent threat of pandemic influenza. The latest US preparedness plans use the single statistic of case-fatality as the basis to evaluate any new threats. On this basis, Avian flu (H5N1) has been declared the single pandemic threat of concern, such...

This paper presents a new approach to obtain unbiased estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) with labor market data. Investigating job changes, we combine the advantages of recent panel studies, which allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity of workers, and conventional...

I use longitudinal survey data from commercial fishing deckhands in the Alaskan Bering Sea to provide new insights on empirical methods commonly used to estimate compensating wage differentials and the value of statistical life (VSL). The unique setting exploits intertemporal variation in...

The value of risks to life as measured by the risk-money trade-off plays a fundamental role in economic analyses of health and safety risks and serves as the principal benefit measure for government risk regulation policies. The hedonic models that have been employed to generate empirical...

This chapter examines the relationship between health and economic growth. Across countries, income per capita is highly correlated with health, as measured by life expectancy or a number of other indicators. Within countries, there is also a correlation between people’s health and income....

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...

The economic approach to valuing risks to life focuses on risk-money tradeoffs for very small risks of death, or the value of statistical life (VSL). These VSL levels will generally exceed the optimal insurance amounts. A substantial literature has estimated the wage-fatality risk tradeoffs,...