Estimating the Value of a Statistical Life: The Importance of Omitted Variables and Publication Bias

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  • 1 January 2004
    • preprint
      • Published in RePEc
Abstract
Measures of public preferences toward risk are critical to evaluations of public policies on many safety, environmental, and health issues. In this paper we provide a method for measuring the revealed preferences for safety risks from state level public choices about speed limits. The idea is to measure the value of the time saved per incremental fatality that results from the voluntary adoption of an increased speed limit. Since adopters must have valued the time saved by greater speeds more than the fatalities created, this ratio provides a convincing and credible upper bound on the value of a statistical life (VSL).

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