This paper presents a new approach to obtain unbiased estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) with labor market data. Investigating job changes,we combine the advantages of recent panel studies, which allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity of workers, and conventional cross-sectional estimations, which primarily exploit the variation of wage and risk between different jobs.We find a VSL of 6.1 million euros from pooled cross-sectional estimation, 1.9 million euros from the static first-differences panel model and 3.5 million euros from the job-changer specification.Thus, ignoring individual heterogeneity causes overestimates of the VSL, whereas identifying the wage-risk tradeoff not only by means of between job variation (job-changer model) but also on the basis of noisy variation on the job (panel models) may lead to underestimates of the VSL. Our results can be used to perform cost-benefit analyses of public projects aimed at reducing fatality risks, e.g., in the domains of health, environmental or traffic policy.
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Paper provided by Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen in its series Ruhr Economic Papers with number
0014.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General J17 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Value of Life; Foregone Income J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
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