IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rje/randje/v25y1994ispringp94-109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mortality Effects of Regulatory Costs and Policy Evaluation Criteria

Author

Listed:
  • W. Kip Viscusi

Abstract

Risk regulations directly reduce risks, but they may produce offsetting risk increases. Regulated risks generate a substitution effect, as individuals' risk-averting actions will diminish. Recognition of these effects alters benefit-cost criteria and the value-of-life estimates pertinent to policy analysis. Particularly expensive risk regulation may be counterproductive. The expenditure level that will lead to the loss of one statistical life equals the value of life divided by the marginal propensity to spend on health. Regulations with a cost of $30 million to $70 million per life saved will, on balance, have a net adverse effect on mortality because of these linkages.

Suggested Citation

  • W. Kip Viscusi, 1994. "Mortality Effects of Regulatory Costs and Policy Evaluation Criteria," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 94-109, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:25:y:1994:i:spring:p:94-109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%28199421%2925%3A1%3C94%3AMEORCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:25:y:1994:i:spring:p:94-109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rje.org .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.