This study reports a new meta-analysis of papers that elicit willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept compensation (WTA) measures of value for the same good. We investigate the effects of type of good and several survey-design features on the WTP/WTA disparity, measured as the...

The effect of new health information on individuals' expectations about their longevity is examined using a Bayesian learning model. Using two-period panel-structured survey data from Taiwan, we find that subjective probabilities of living to age 75 and 85 are significantly smaller for...

The relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce the probability of an adverse event and the degree of risk aversion is ambiguous. The ambiguity arises because paying for protection worsens the outcome in the event the adverse event occurs, which influences the expected marginal...

We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk reduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost–benefit analysis—i.e., the “value per statistical life” (VSL) approach—and various social welfare functions (SWFs)....

The choice of the rate at which one should discount the long-term benefits of mitigating climate change is highly controversial. Both the level and the slope of the term structure of discount rates have been discussed intensively in relation to the determination of the social cost of carbon....

Assessing the welfare impact of consumer health advisories is a thorny task. Recently, Shimshack and Ward (2010) studied how U.S. households responded to FDA's 2001 mercury-in-fish advisory. They found that the average at-risk household reduced fish consumption by 21%, resulting in a...