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Pricing Lives for Corporate and Governmental Risk Decisions
(Vanderbilt Law Review, 2015)
The value of a statistical life (VSL) is the most influential single parameter used in calculating the benefits of governmental regulations. While there are some inter-agency differences, there is a commonality in the ...
Punitive Damages by Numbers: Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker
(Supreme Court Economic Review, 2010)
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker is a landmark that establishes an upper bound ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages of 1:1 for maritime cases, with potential implications for other ...
Does Product Liability Make Us Safer?
(Regulation, 2012)
Product liability law is intended to create an environment that fosters safer products. However, this law often has adverse consequences. Some of the problems stem from the inherent nature of product risk decisions and the ...
Deterring and Compensating Oil-Spill Catastrophes: The Need for Strict and Two-Tier Liability
(Virginia Law Review, 2011)
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted the glaring weaknesses in the current liability and regulatory regime for oil spills and for environmental catastrophes more broadly. This Article proposes a new liability ...
Policy Relevant Heterogeneity in the Value of Statistical Life: New Evidence from Panel Data Quantile Regressions
(Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2010)
We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects ...
Risky Investment Decisions: How Are Individuals Influenced by Their Groups?
(Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2011)
We investigate the effect of group versus individual decision-making in the context of risky investment decisions in which all subjects are fully informed of the probabilities and payoffs. Although there is full information, ...
Reference-Dependent Valuations of Risk: Why Willingness-to-Accept Exceeds Willingness-to-Pay
(Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2011)
The gap between willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) benefit values typifies situations in which reference points — and direction of movement from reference points — are consequential. Why WTA-WTP ...
Promoting Recycling: Private Values, Social Norms, and Economic Incentives
(American Economic Review, 2011)
Individual behaviors that benefit the environment are potentially influenced by personal values of environmental quality, social norms that encourage proenvironmental actions, and economic incentives. Economic incentives ...
Risk Regulation Lessons from Mad Cows
(Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, 2013)
The mad cow disease crisis in the United Kingdom (U.K.) was a major policy disaster. The government and public health officials failed to identify the risk to humans, created tremendous uncertainty regarding the human risks ...
Policy Challenges of the Heterogeneity of the Value of Statistical Life
(Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, 2010)
Economic research has developed estimates of the heterogeneity of the value of statistical life (VSL) on dimensions such as individual age, income, immigrant status, and the nature of the risk exposure. This paper examines ...