The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been the target of two recent controversies involving the devaluation of life - the 2003 use of a senior discount for the value of statistical life for those over age 65 and the 2008 downward reassessment of the value of statistical life by the...

The risks of natural disasters have received substantial attention because of the substantial stakes involved and the lessons disasters provide for assessing the rationality of risky decisions. While there are some reasonable aspects of disaster insurance purchases, there are notable...

Calabresi's theory of tort liability (1961) as a risk distribution mechanism established insurance as an objective of tort liability. Calabresi's risk-spreading concept of tort has provided the impetus for much of the subsequent development of tort liability doctrine, including risk-utility...

Estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) establish the price government agencies use to value fatality risks. Transferring these valuations to other populations often utilizes the income elasticity of the VSL, which typically draw on estimates from meta-analyses. Using a data set...

The 2014 GM ignition switch recall highlighted the inadequacies of the company's safety culture and the shortcomings of regulatory sanctions. The company's inattention to systematic thinking about product safety can be traced to the hostile treatment of corporate risk analyses by the courts....

Environmental risk beliefs may be governed more by direct experiences than by indirect experiences derived from outcomes experienced by others. This emphasis could have a rational basis or could be based on behavioral rationales in terms of the well-established Availability Heuristic or the...

While regulatory agencies place high values on the benefits associated with the reduction in mortality risks due to regulations, these same agencies substantially undervalue lives in their enforcement efforts. The disparity between the valuation of prospective risks and fatalities that have...

In the span of ten days, the United States experienced two of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. The first mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York killed ten people and injured three more—mostly elderly shoppers. The second mass shooting at an elementary school in...

Many regulatory agencies have authority to promptly protect against grave dangers—so long as the danger is not too grave, according to recent Supreme Court jurisprudence. Agencies are often delegated emergency authority to address risks rapidly, though temporarily, to protect the public from...