Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- Calculating the Value of Statistical Life (VSL) -- Heterogeneity of VSL Based on the Risk Level -- Segmented Labor Markets -- Heterogeneity Based on Age -- Value of a Statistical Life Year (VSLY) -- The VSLY Approach -- An Application of VSL and VSLY to the Private Cost of Cigarettes -- Income Effects -- The Advent of Using VSL in the Policy Arena -- The ``Senior Discount'' Controversy -- Should Income Levels Matter? -- The Devaluation of Life Controversy -- Adjustments for the Size of Risk -- Risk Levels in Hedonic Wage Studies -- A Calibration Example for Non-Incremental Risk Changes -- Latency and Cancer Benefit Issues -- Dread and Contextual Sources of Variation in Valuing Life: Deaths from Attacks by Terrorists -- Should the VSL Be Added to the Present Value of Economic Damages? -- Conclusion -- References.

The September 11, 2001 terrorism attack on the United States has led government officials to rethink anti-terrorism policies and researchers to assess the implications for the study of risk and uncertainty. This book draws on the expertise of eminent researchers in several risk-related fields to assess three substantive areas of concern - risk beliefs, insurance market effects, and policy responses. The risk belief analyses consider several key questions. How do people think about the risks of terrorism? What are their attitudes toward these risks? To what extent are these low probability and highly dramatic risks overestimated? Several chapters present original survey results analyzing these different aspects of terrorism risk assessments. These studies also begin to explore how people might be willing to sacrifice civil liberties to reduce the risk of terrorism and whether perceived terrorism risks are affected by the severity of the outcome and by proximity to past terrorist attacks. The insurance industry incurred financial losses generated by the terrorism attack. The risks had not been foreseen and were not reflected in insurance pricing. These new terrorism risks generated considerable uncertainty for insurance markets, leading to insurance stock price declines that are documented in this book. Subsequently, a stock price rebound occurred, particularly for the higher quality firms. A third pair of essays deals with policy responses to terrorism risks. A central theme of these analyses is that protective actions by one party have fundamental effects on the risks posed to others. Making airlines immune to terrorist attack may shift the terrorism attacks elsewhere, diminishing the net improvement in security. The papers included here examine how resources should be targeted given these offsetting effects. Contributors to this volume include J. David Cummins, Neil A. Doherty, Baruch Fischhoff, Geoffrey Heal, Howard Kunreuther, Cass R. Sunstein, W. Kip Viscusi, and Richard J. Zeckhauser, among others

Examining issues related to the social regulation of risk, this volume contains essays on the value of life, empirical estimates of the value of life, the rationality of individual responses to risk, the effect of government risk regulation efforts, and the role of the courts and insurance

Regulations to promote health and safety may be costly relative to the expected health and safety benefits, and may actually have negative effects on health and safety. These negative effects, or costs, may be due to reduced private spending on health and safety, moral hazard, or the creation of new risks. This volume considers the use of costs--benefit analysis, risk--risk analysis, and health--health analysis to determine the mortality cost associated with regulatory expenditures