Advanced Search

Discounting Statistical Lives

Contents:

Author Info

  • Horowitz, John K
  • Carson, Richard T

Abstract

Benefit-cost analysis of government projects that reduce health risks over an extended period of time requires an estimate of the value of a future life. This in turn requires a discount rate. We suggest and carry out a method to estimate the discount rate using observations on discrete choices between projects with different time horizons. This method is implemented in a survey context. For our primary example, the estimated median discount rate is close to the market rate. A substantial proportion of the sample is estimated to have quite low discount rates. We provide some evidence that discount rates may differ for different types of risks. Copyright 1990 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Download Info

To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Springer in its journal Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.

Volume (Year): 3 (1990)
Issue (Month): 4 (December)
Pages: 403-13
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:kap:jrisku:v:3:y:1990:i:4:p:403-13

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=100299

For corrections or technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Guenther Eichhorn) or (Christopher F. Baum).

Related research

Keywords:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
Cited by:
  1. W. Kip Viscusi & Joel Huber, 2006. "Hyperbolic Discounting of Public Goods," NBER Working Papers 11935, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Jin-Tan Liu & James K. Hammitt, 2003. "Effects of Disease Type and Latency on the Value of Mortality Risk," NBER Working Papers 10012, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Anna Alberini & Maureen Cropper & Alan Krupnick & Nathalie B. Simon, 2004. "Willingness to Pay for Mortality Risk Reductions: Does Latency Matter?," Working Papers 2004.53, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
  4. Carson, Richard T & Mitchell, Robert Cameron, 2000. "Public Preferences Towards Environmental Risks: The Case of Trihalomethanes," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt12t5g549, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
  5. Anna Alberini & Stefania Tonin & Margherita Turvani & Aline Chiabai, 2006. "Paying for Permanence: Public Preferences for Contaminated Site Cleanup," Working Papers 2006.113, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
  6. S. Höjgård & U. Enemark & C. H. Lyttkens & A. Lindgren & T. Troëng & H. Weibull, 2002. "Discounting and clinical decision making: Physicians, patients, the general public, and the management of asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysms," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(4), pages 355-370.
  7. Francis Asenso-Boadi & Tim J. Peters & Joanna Coast, 2008. "Exploring differences in empirical time preference rates for health: an application of meta-regression," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(2), pages 235-248.
  8. W. Viscusi & Joel Huber & Jason Bell, 2008. "Estimating discount rates for environmental quality from utility-based choice experiments," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 199-220, December.
  9. Anna Alberini & Milan Ščasný, 2011. "Context and the VSL: Evidence from a Stated Preference Study in Italy and the Czech Republic," Environmental & Resource Economics, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 49(4), pages 511-538, August.
  10. repec:cdl:ucsdec:545419 is not listed on IDEAS

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jrisku:v:3:y:1990:i:4:p:403-13

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Guenther Eichhorn) or (Christopher F. Baum).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.