Willingness to Accept Equals Willingness to Pay for Labor Market Estimates of the Value of Statistical Life

Abstract

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Using data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries to estimate the “value of a statistical life”

“…Kniesner, Viscusi, and Ziliak presented empirical estimates which indicate that there is no significant difference in VSL levels whether workers who change jobs are incurring increases in risk or obtaining decreases in risk, because the wage-risk tradeoffs are similar irrespective of the direction of change in the worker's job risk. 13 These results provide a test of the general theoretical underpinnings of the VSL analysis, namely, that the tradeoff rates between wages and changes in risk should be the same for small changes of risk levels in each direction.…”

Do We Really Value Identified Lives More Highly Than Statistical Lives?

“…16 The discrepancy they find between WTP and WTA arises because their WTA estimates are even larger. As further support for the reasonableness of the $5-$12 million range, many estimates of willingness to pay for safety equipment and safer cars, clearly WTP and not WTA, also fall in this range after adjustment to the 2010 price level, although toward the lower end.…”

“…16 In the paper they report regressions for job changers moving to riskier jobs, who should be deciding on the basis of WTA, and those moving to less risky jobs, who should be deciding on the basis of WTP. Their point estimates of the compensating wage differentials for the 2 groups are similar in some specifications, different in others, with WTA usually but not always greater than WTP, but the differences are not large.…”

Estimation of the Value of Aquatic Ecosystem Services in the Coastal Area of Jiangsu Province, China

“…Theoretically, there was little difference between the 2 values (Willig 1976;Randall and Stoll 1980). The WTA/WTP ratio for nonmarket goods was shown to be the highest of various goods (Horowitz and McConnell 2002;Kniesner et al 2014). Horowitz and McConnell (2002) reviewed 45 surveys and found that WTA was larger than WTP with an average multiple of 2 to 10 times, the average proportion was 7.17, and the lowest was 0.74 and the highest 112.67.…”