An Empirical Bayes Approach to Combining and Comparing Estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life for Environmental Policy Analysis

By I. Kochi, Bryan Hubbell, R. Kramer. 2006

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An empirical Bayes pooling method is used to combine and compare estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL). The data come from 40 selected studies published between 1974 and 2002, containing 197 VSL estimates. The estimated composite distribution of empirical Bayes adjusted VSL has a mean of $5.4 million and a standard deviation of $2.4 million. The empirical Bayes method greatly reduces the variability around the pooled VSL estimate. The pooled VSL estimate is influenced by the choice of valuation method, study location, and union status of sample but not to the source of data on occupational risk or the consideration of non-fatal risk injury.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/350277a2e52b4aab9643e63f1fbca40e42c342ac

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Citations in the corpus

• The Income Elasticity of the Value per Statistical Life: Transferring Estimates between High and Low Income Populations (2011, methodology): “Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) guidance (DOT 2009) relies on one wage-risk study (Viscusi 2004) and four meta-analyses (Miller 2000, Mrozek and Taylor 2002, Viscusi and Aldy 2003, and Kochi et al. 2006). A review conducted for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (Robinson 2008) an”
• Valuing Mortality Risk Reductions: Progress and Challenges (2011, methodology): “Each meta-analysis combines studies that address environmental, health, and traffic risks; although traffic risks dominate the older studies, an increasing number of studies now address other causes of death.28 The resulting VSL estimates range from approximately $2 million to $8 million (2009 USD).”
• The Use (and Abuse) of Meta-Analysis in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: An Assessment (2009, unknown): “The methods used by Kochi et al. (2006) are insightful as they use 197 primary observations to construct 60 homogeneous groups. In general, the other 15 studies illustrate a major concern with meta-analyses in economics, which is the use of multiple observations from each primary study. The mean num”