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 about 24%, resulting in...

Stated preference (SP) surveys attempt to obtain monetary values for non-market goods that reflect individuals’ “true†preferences. Numerous empirical studies suggest that monetary values from SP studies are sensitive to survey design and so may not reflect respondents’...

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

Valuing the health of children for cost-utility or cost-benefit analysis poses a number of additional challenges when compared with valuing adult health. Some of these challenges relate to the inability of young children to value changes in health directly and the potential biases associated...

The value of reducing health and mortality risks is often measured using value per statistical life (VSL) or one of several life-year measures (e.g., life years, quality-adjusted life years, disability-adjusted life years). I derive the utility function that is admissible when preferences for...

We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality riskreduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost-benefit analysis—i.e., the “value per statistical life†(VSL) approach—and three benchmark social welfare...

The monetized value of avoided premature mortality typically dominates the calculated benefits of air pollution regulations; therefore, characterization of the uncertainty surrounding these estimates is key to good policymaking. Formal expert judgment elicitation methods are one means of...

Stated preference (SP) surveys attempt to obtain monetary values for non-market goods that reflect individuals’ “true” preferences. Numerous empirical studies suggest that monetary values from SP studies are sensitive to survey design and so may not reflect respondents’ true preferences....