The value of mortality risk reduction is an important component of the benefits of environmental policies. In recent years, the number, scope, and quality of valuation studies have increased dramatically. Revealed-preference studies of wage compensation for occupational risks, on which analysts...

Decisions on investing in health as well as other policies require deciding how to best allocate available resources - recognizing that using labor, materials, and other resources for one purpose means that they cannot be used for other purposes. Approaches for economic evaluation, including...

Conventionally, benefit-cost analysis focuses on economic efficiency, summing the values of a policy’s costs and benefits based on the preferences of those affected. There is widespread agreement that it should be supplemented with information on how the impacts are distributed across...

Benefit-cost analysis and other forms of economic evaluation are powerful tools, encouraging the systematic collection and assessment of the evidence needed to support sound policy decisions. In low-and middle-income countries, where resources are very scarce and needs are very great, such...

In benefit-cost analysis, ideally the values placed on nonfatal risk reductions would reflect the preferences of those affected by a policy; i.e., individuals’ willingness to exchange their own income to achieve a reduction in their own risk. Presumably, this willingness to pay (WTP) accounts...