The Experts below are selected from a list of 318 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
W. Kip Viscusi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life
National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020Co-Authors: Thomas J. Kniesner, James P. Ziliak, W. Kip ViscusiAbstract:Our research examines empirically the age pattern of the implicit Value of Life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of Life expectancy, aging can affect the Value of Life through an effect on planned Life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit Value of Life if there is a Life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit Value of Life rises and falls over the Lifetime in a way that the Value for the elderly is higher than the average over all ages or for the young. There are important policy implications of our empirical results. Because there may be age-specific benefits of programs to save statistical lives, instead of valuing the lives of the elderly at less than the young, policymakers should more correctly Value the lives of the elderly at as much as twice the young because of relatively greater consumption lost when accidental death occurs.
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Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life
The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2006Co-Authors: Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, James P. ZiliakAbstract:Abstract Our research presents new evidence on the age pattern of the implicit Value of Life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of Life expectancy, aging can affect the Value of Life through an effect on planned Life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit Value of Life if there is a Life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit Value of Life rises and falls over the Lifetime in a way that the Value for the elderly is higher than the average over all ages or for the young. There are important health policy implications of our empirical results. Because there may be age-specific benefits of programs to save statistical lives, instead of valuing the lives of the elderly at less than the young, health policymakers should more correctly Value the lives of the elderly at as much as twice the young because of relatively greater consumption lost when accidental death occurs.
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Misuses and Proper Uses of Hedonic Values of Life
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000Co-Authors: W. Kip ViscusiAbstract:Estimates of the statistical Value of Life have become the standard reference point for valuing risks to Life and health in regulatory contexts. Attempts to use these estimates in courtroom settings as a measure of compensation are misdirected. The Value-of-Life estimates are based on a deterrence or prevention concept rather than an insurance concept and will provide overinsurance to accident victims. Value-of-Life estimates are, however, pertinent for use as reference points in assessing liability. Possible examples of where it can be used include cases such as the Ford Pinto and GMC truck burn cases.
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Misuses and Proper Uses of Hedonic Values of Life in Legal Contexts
Journal of Forensic Economics, 2000Co-Authors: W. Kip ViscusiAbstract:Estimates of the statistical Value of Life have become the standard reference point for valuing risks to Life and health in regulatory contexts. Attempts to use these estimates in courtroom settings as a measure of compensation are misdirected. The Value-of-Life estimates are based on a deterrence or prevention concept rather than an insurance concept and will provide overinsurance to accident victims. Value-of-Life estimates are, however, pertinent for use as reference points in assessing liability. Possible examples of where it can be used include cases such as the Ford Pinto and GMC truck burn cases.
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The Value of Life: Editor's Introduction
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1997Co-Authors: W. Kip ViscusiAbstract:Issues pertaining to the Value of Life involve some of the most fundamental concepts in the area of risk and uncertainty. Individual perceptions of mortality risks have long served as the reference point for assessing how people think about risk. Since the time of Adam Smith economists have focused on market choices involving fatality risks, particularly those on the job, in order to assess how reliably individuals make choices in risk contexts and how markets respond to their expressed risk preferences. More recently, the Value of Life has become an explicit issue in policy debates. In the United States government, agencies have been explicitly valuing statistical lives using appropriate Value-of-Life methodologies for over a decade. The policy issues are intertwined with a wide variety of concerns pertaining to how people think about risk and how they make decisions involving mortality risk. These policy concepts raise other pertinent concerns as well. Life-saving efforts do not confer immortality, but extend Life probabilistically. How should the framers of government policy incorporate recognition of the duration of Life lost and the quality of those Life years? Timing also enters in other ways as lives saved now may have a different Value than lives saved in the future. The first part of the special issue on the Value of Life appeared in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Volume 14, Number 3, and the second segment of papers appears in this issue. Whereas the previous issue is more wide-ranging in focus, this issue focuses almost exclusively on timing and duration issues. The first of the Value-of-Life journal issues began with a paper by Viscusi, Hakes, and Carlin. Their catalog of the risks of death by cause was distinctive in that it distinguished not only overall mortality risks but the duration of Life lost as well. Doing so increases the relative importance of accidents as compared to deferred illnesses. Using these estimates, the authors showed that many well-known perceptional biases can be traced to a failure to adjust for the duration of Life lost. The paper estimated the implicit rate of discount that people use in assessing the discounted expected Life-years lost to various causes of death, which they find to be between 3.3 and 12.4 percent. Their calculations of the cost effectiveness of regulatory policies are in terms of the cost per discounted Life-year saved, decreasing the relative efficacy of regulations affecting health as compared to those affecting safety. The paper by Jenni and Loewenstein explores the “identifiable victim effect.” It has long been observed that people are willing to pay more for saving an identified Life than saving a statistical Life. The classic example in the literature pertains to the amount society would pay to save a trapped girl in a well. Is this attachment to identified lives irrational, or is the lower Value attached to statistical lives a reflection of people’s failure to think
Isaac Ehrlich - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Uncertain Lifetime, Life Protection, and the Value of Life Saving
Journal of Health Economics, 2000Co-Authors: Isaac EhrlichAbstract:The analytic innovation is treating Life's end as uncertain, and Life expectancy as partly the product of individuals' efforts to self-protect against mortality and morbidity risks. The demand for self-protection is modeled in a stochastic, Life-cycle framework under alternative insurance options. The model helps explain the trend and systematic diversity in Life expectancies across different population groups, as well as the wide variability in reported "Value of Life saving" estimates. The analysis yields a closed-form solution for individuals' Value of Life saving that is estimable empirically. It reflects the impacts of specific personal characteristics and alternative insurance options on both Life expectancy and its valuation.
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a model of the demand for longevity and the Value of Life extension
Journal of Political Economy, 1990Co-Authors: Isaac Ehrlich, Hiroyuki ChumaAbstract:We specify a demand function for longevity, or quantity of Life, along with corresponding demand functions for indicators of quality of Life and a Value-of-health and Life extension functions. We show that the demand for health must be derived in conjunction with that for longevity and the related consumption plan, and that all choices depend on initial individual endowments and terminal conditions. Our comparative dynamics predictions indicate that optimal health and longevity are increasing functions of endowed wealth rather than, necessarily, current income; that improvements in opportunities to produce health can accentuate the differences between endowed health and attained longevity levels; and that the Value individuals ascribe to their health may be increasing over a good portion of their Life cycle. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
Tomas Philipson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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terminal care and the Value of Life near its end
National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010Co-Authors: Tomas Philipson, Gary S Becker, Dana P Goldman, Kevin M MurphyAbstract:Medical care at the end of Life, estimated to contribute up to a quarter of US health care spending, often encounters skepticism from payers and policy makers who question its high cost and often minimal health benefits. It seems generally agreed upon that medical resources are being wasted on excessive care for end-of-Life treatments that often only prolong minimally an already frail Life. However, though many observers have claimed that such spending is often irrational and wasteful, little explicit and systematic analysis exists on the incentives that determine end of Life health care spending. There exists no positive theory that attempts to explain the high degree of end-of Life spending and why differences across individuals, populations, or time occur in such spending. This paper attempts to provide the first rational and systematic analysis of the incentives behind end of Life care. The main argument we make is that existing theoretical and empirical analysis of the Value of Life do not apply, and often under-Values, the Value of Life near its end and terminal care. We argue that several factors drive up the Value of Life near its end including the low opportunity cost of medical spending near ones death, the Value of hope including living into new innovations, and potential positive effect of on the Value of Life from being frail. We calibrate the ex-post Value of hope associated with treatments for HIV patients to be as much as 4 times as high as standard per-capita estimates of treatment effects and as many as two and a half times as high as aggregate Values across all cohorts.
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the Value of Life in general equilibrium
National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008Co-Authors: Tomas Philipson, Anupam B Jena, Casey B MulliganAbstract:Perhaps the most important change of the last century was the great expansion of Life itself -- in the US alone, Life expectancy increased from 48 to 78 years. Recent economic estimates confirm this claim, finding that the economic Value of the gain in longevity was on par with the Value of growth in material well-being, as measured by income per capita. However, ever since Malthus, economists have recognized that demographic changes are linked to economic behavior and vice versa. Put simply, living with others who live 78 years is different than living with others who live only 48 years, so that valuing the extra 30 years of Life is not simply a matter of valuing the extra years a single individual lives. The magnitude by which such valuations differ is overstated when there are increasing returns to population and is understated under decreasing returns. Focusing on the gains in Life expectancy in the United States from 1900 to 2000, we find that a significant part of the Value of longer Life may be affected by these general equilibrium demographic effects.
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the Value of Life near its end and terminal care
National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007Co-Authors: Gary S Becker, Tomas Philipson, Kevin M MurphyAbstract:Medical care at the end of Life, which is often is estimated to contribute up to a quarter of US health care spending, often encounters skepticism from payers and policy makers who question its high cost and often minimal health benefits. It seems generally agreed upon that medical resources are being wasted on excessive care for end-of-Life treatments that often only prolong minimally an already frail Life. However, though many observers have claimed that such spending is often irrational and wasteful, little explicit and systematic analysis exists on the incentives that determine end of Life health care spending. There exists no positive theory that attempts to explain the high degree of end-of Life spending and why differences across individuals, populations, or time occur in such spending. This paper attempts to provide the first rational and systematic analysis of the incentives behind end of Life care. The main argument we make is that existing estimates of the Value of a Life year do not apply to the valuation of Life at the end of Life. We stress the low opportunity cost of medical spending near ones death, the importance of keeping hope alive in a terminal care setting, the larger social Value of a Life than estimated in private demand settings, as well as the insignificance in quality of Life in lowering its Value. We derive how an ex-ante perspective in terms of insurance and R&D alters some of these conclusions.
Hiroyuki Chuma - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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a model of the demand for longevity and the Value of Life extension
Journal of Political Economy, 1990Co-Authors: Isaac Ehrlich, Hiroyuki ChumaAbstract:We specify a demand function for longevity, or quantity of Life, along with corresponding demand functions for indicators of quality of Life and a Value-of-health and Life extension functions. We show that the demand for health must be derived in conjunction with that for longevity and the related consumption plan, and that all choices depend on initial individual endowments and terminal conditions. Our comparative dynamics predictions indicate that optimal health and longevity are increasing functions of endowed wealth rather than, necessarily, current income; that improvements in opportunities to produce health can accentuate the differences between endowed health and attained longevity levels; and that the Value individuals ascribe to their health may be increasing over a good portion of their Life cycle. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
Steven Horrobin - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Towards Naturalistic Transcendence: The Value of Life and Life Extension to Persons as Conative Processes
The Future of Aging, 2010Co-Authors: Steven HorrobinAbstract:Much has been said concerning the ethics of Life extension, with primary foci being various forms distributive justice with respect to interpersonal cases, and questions of identity, utility, and instrumental Value in the personal case. Comparatively little, however, has yet been said of the nature of the Value of Life’s continuance, simpliciter. What has been said has taken the form of bioconservative reference to canonical concepts of the Value of Life, wherein the likes of the religious concept of the “sanctity” of Life serves paradoxically to set limits upon the Value of Life’s continuance, without giving any internal account of that Value whatever. Where more bio-liberal commentators have referenced this idea, it has largely been to deny that the concept refers to anything in existence, which is taken to be that which is within the frame of the natural universe. This paper aims to set out the groundwork for a naturalistic account of the Value of Life’s continuance to persons as a constitutive and therefore inalienable Value. Beyond this, it is suggested that this Value is isomorphic and indeed identical with the principle in physics that sets biological organisms apart from other physical systems, and which is also the originator and orientor of all biophysical, and indeed moral, Values at all.
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Immortality, Human Nature, the Value of Life and the Value of Life Extension
Bioethics, 2006Co-Authors: Steven HorrobinAbstract:The emerging discourse concerning the desirability of intervention in senescence to achieve radical Life extension for persons has featured some striking blurring in traditional liberal and conservative commitments and positions. This affords an opportunity for re-evaluation of these same. The canonical conservative view of the intrinsic Value of Life is re-examined and found primarily to involve a denial of human prerogative, rather than an active underwriting of the Value of Life extension. A critique is offered of an attempted argument against aging intervention from a proto-conservative worry about a purported threat to human nature. Immortality is found to be a red herring, but a revealing one. Further, the classic liberal view is examined and found wanting in terms of the gravity of its own commitment to, and fullness of its account of the Value of Life, and the Value of Life extension. An analysis of the liberal conception of personhood is proposed that both defines persons necessarily as processes, and demonstrates the inalienable quality of the Value of Life extension to persons so defined.
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The Value of Life and the Value of Life extension.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006Co-Authors: Steven HorrobinAbstract:Abstract: Recent developments in aging research have added new urgency to the bioethical debate concerning Life and death issues, the Value of Life, and the reasonable limits of medicine. This paper analyzes the basic structures of the liberal and conservative components of this debate, showing that there has hitherto been inadequate analysis on both sides concerning the nature and implications of the Value of Life, as well as, and as distinct from the Value of Life extension. Classic concepts of the intrinsic or extrinsic Value of Life are argued to be tangential or actually irrelevant to the Value of Life's continuance and so to the Value of Life extension. An analysis of personhood is proposed which focuses explicitly upon the Value of Life extension to persons. This analysis shows that persons may only intelligibly be understood as processes, for whom Life extension is an inalienable and fundamental Value. It is further proposed that, properly understood, such an analysis may significantly narrow the liberal/conservative divide in bioethics.
