Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Evaluating the Validity of the Value of Statistical Life written by Elissa Cohen and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) captures the trade-offs people are willing to make to reduce the probability of death. While VSL is used by policymakers to assess safety regulations, questions remain about how to estimate it. First, VSL estimates from labor contexts are used to assess non-labor regulations, which may not be justifiable if people value risk mitigation differently across contexts. Second, VSL estimates vary by measurement approach (revealed (RP) vs. stated preferences (SP)), reflecting different underlying assumptions about how people appraise risk in decision-making. To address the context stability question, I conduct the first within-subjects multi-condition discrete choice experiment soliciting SP in labor, health, and transportation contexts. People's health VSL are significantly larger than their labor or transportation VSL, suggesting regulators may be underestimating people's willingness to pay for safety regulation in health care. To address the measurement approach question, I solicit employment history from the same subjects and test for differences between people's RP and SP in the labor market. Though the point estimates differ considerably, the hypothesis that people's labor market RP and SP are the same cannot be rejected. This provides some support for claims that SP studies may serve as meaningful complements or substitutes when conducting non-market valuations.