Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Public sector allocative decisions should reflect, as far as possible, the preferences of those affected by the decisions. Conventional benefit–cost analysis (BCA) will simply aggregate individuals' private willingness-to-pay (WTP) over all affected individuals to estimate the total benefits of a policy that delivers a public good. Given the nature of a public good, it is not unreasonable to consider that an individual may have altruistic preferences over the consumption of the public good by others. In this paper, we set out the theoretical underpinnings for a new citizen-based WTP, informed by political philosophy. Our model extends the standard social utility model (Bergstrom, 2006) of WTP for a public good when individuals are altruists by incorporating a Veil of Ignorance (VoI; Harsanyi, 1955). Our findings show that our WTP (Citizen) correctly includes altruistic as well as distributional preferences of individuals in society into WTP for use in a BCA. When WTP (Citizen) are aggregated for use in a BCA, equal weight is given to each individual's preference and the BCA will correctly identify potentially Pareto-improving projects in a consistent manner.

AbstractThe impact of climate change on human health was identified as a priority for the UN COP26 conference. In this article, we consider climate‐induced changes to mortality risks and how to incorporate these formally in the policy appraisal process. In the United Kingdom (UK), the Value of Statistical Life (VSL) is used to monetarize the benefits of policies to reduce mortality risks but it remains an open, empirical question as to whether the current VSL (£2.14 million per fatality prevented, December 2021 values) for traffic accidents should be applied in other contexts without any modification and particularly for extreme weather event fatalities. Using a representative sample of the UK population, we aim to estimate and better understand the trade‐offs people make when comparing mortality risks, drawing on psychological insights from construal level and regulatory focus theories. We design a stated preference survey using a relative valuation framework with nonmonetary, risk–risk trade‐off questions between extreme weather event and traffic accident mortality risks. We find evidence of an extreme weather event risk premium of 1.2–1.6 (implying a climate‐related VSL of £2.52–£3.41 million). We also find that participants who are psychologically close to climate change (based on construal level theory), weigh reducing extreme weather event mortality risks almost two times that of reducing traffic accident mortality risks.

AbstractAs climate variability is increasing, extreme events such as temperature fluctuations are expected to become more frequent. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are especially vulnerable to heat-related variability and its ensuing impacts on mortality. Therefore, there is an urgent need to understand how citizens in LMICs trade-off climate-related mortality risks with other risks such as traffic accidents, and what values they place on reducing such risks. As populations in LMICs are income-constrained, we adopt a non-monetary, risk-risk trade-off (RRTO) valuation method instead of the standard willingness-to-pay stated preference-based approach. We estimate the resulting risk premium for heatwave-related mortality risks through an adapted double-bounded, dichotomous choice approach to establish whether, on average, people value avoiding these risks more compared to reducing traffic risks. Using a sample of over 2,300 individuals from across seven states in India, a country with one of the highest heat-related mortality globally, we estimate the heatwave risk mortality premium to be between 2.2–2.9, indicating that on average, individuals weigh reducing heatwave-related mortality risks more than two times that of reducing traffic accident mortality risks. Based on a standard benefit transfer methodology for LMICs, this premium translates to a Value of Statistical Life (VSL) of USD 0.37–2.61 million for India.

AbstractIn this paper we test the efficiency of family resource allocation in three-generation households. Understanding how the so-called "squeezed middle" generation allocates resources towards the children and grandparents in the household will be increasingly important as populations age, and more elderly people become dependent upon their relations for financial support. Despite a large literature on household resource allocation in two-generation households (parents and children), to the best of our knowledge ours is the first study that includes the third generation. We present a theoretical model and conduct a discrete choice experiment in the context of reductions in the lifetime risk of developing coronary artery disease to verify the efficient resource allocation hypothesis. The data is obtained from a large sample of the Polish population. The sample consists of the middle generation members of three-generation households and hence WTP represents household value from the perspective of the "squeezed middle" parent. The results imply that household resource allocation is efficient. This has implications for understanding the likely response to government financial support aimed at supporting elderly people and their families.