New Estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life Using Air Bag Regulations as a Quasi-Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rohlfs, Chris; Sullivan, Ryan; Kniesner, Thomas
• 署名单位: Morgan Stanley; United States Department of Defense; United States Navy; Naval Postgraduate School; Claremont Colleges; Claremont Graduate University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20110309
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 331-359
• 关键词: Road safety; metaanalysis; models

摘要

Due to federal regulations, automobile air bag availability was a model-specific discontinuous function of model year for used vehicles in the 1990s and early 2000s. We use the discontinuities and the gradual increase in the supply of air bags to trace out the demand curve for air bags and the implied distribution of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) across consumers. Although imprecise, our preferred point estimates indicate that the median VSL is between $9 million and $11 million and that a sizable portion of consumers placed negative values on air bags, probably due to distrust of the technology.