W. Kip Viscusi – författare

The need to understand the theories and applications of economic and finance risk has been clear to everyone since the financial crisis, and this collection of original essays proffers broad, high-level explanations of risk and uncertainty. The economics of risk and uncertainty is unlike most branches of economics in spanning from the individual decision-maker to the market (and indeed, social decisions), and ranging from purely theoretical analysis through individual experimentation, empirical analysis, and applied and policy decisions. It also has close and sometimes conflicting relationships with theoretical and applied statistics, and psychology. The aim of this volume is to provide an overview of diverse aspects of this field, ranging from classical and foundational work through current developments.

In this major new work, Michael J. Moore and W. Kip Viscusi explore the question, "How are workers compensated for exposing themselves to the risk of physical injury while on the job?" The authors detail the diverse nature of labor market responses to job risks and the important role played by compensation-for-risk mechanisms. Following an overview of the literature, they present a number of unprecedented results. Comprehensive and systematic discussions of issues such as wage-risk tradeoffs, the effects of workers'' compensation on wages and risk, the role of unions, and the role of product liability suits in job-related injuries make the volume an essential work for all those interested in risk policy and workplace safety. Among the major results presented for the first time are the first estimates of the value of life derived from recently released occupational fatality risk data from the National Traumatic Occupational Fatality Survey. From these same data the authors also demonstrate that higher workers'' compensation benefit levels significantly reduce fatalities on the job--a finding that challenges virtually every other treatment of this topic.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

How society’s undervaluing of life puts all of us at risk—and the groundbreaking economic measure that can fix itLike it or not, sometimes we need to put a monetary value on people''s lives. In the past, government agencies used the financial "cost of death" to monetize the mortality risks of regulatory policies, but this method vastly undervalued life. Pricing Lives tells the story of how the government came to adopt an altogether different approach--the value of a statistical life, or VSL—and persuasively shows how its more widespread use could create a safer and more equitable society for everyone.In the 1980s, W. Kip Viscusi used the method to demonstrate that the benefits of requiring businesses to label hazardous chemicals immensely outweighed the costs. VSL is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices. With it, Viscusi calculated how much more money workers would demand to take on hazardous jobs, boosting calculated benefits by an order of magnitude. His current estimate of the value of a statistical life is $10 million. In this book, Viscusi provides a comprehensive look at all aspects of economic and policy efforts to price lives, including controversial topics such as whether older people''s lives are worth less and richer people''s lives are worth more. He explains why corporations need to abandon the misguided cost-of-death approach, how the courts can profit from increased application of VSL in assessing liability and setting damages, and how other countries consistently undervalue risks to life.Pricing Lives proposes sensible economic guideposts to foster more protective policies and greater levels of safety in the United States and throughout the world.

The September 11, 2001 terrorism attack on the United States has led government officials to rethink anti-terrorism policies and researchers to assess the implications for the study of risk and uncertainty. This book draws on the expertise of eminent researchers in several risk-related fields to assess three substantive areas of concern - risk beliefs, insurance market effects, and policy responses.

The risk belief analyses consider several key questions. How do people think about the risks of terrorism? What are their attitudes toward these risks? To what extent are these low probability and highly dramatic risks overestimated?

Several chapters present original survey results analyzing these different aspects of terrorism risk assessments. These studies also begin to explore how people might be willing to sacrifice civil liberties to reduce the risk of terrorism and whether perceived terrorism risks are affected by the severity of the outcome and by proximity to past terrorist attacks.

The insurance industry incurred financial losses generated by the terrorism attack. The risks had not been foreseen and were not reflected in insurance pricing. These new terrorism risks generated considerable uncertainty for insurance markets, leading to insurance stock price declines that are documented in this book. Subsequently, a stock price rebound occurred, particularly for the higher quality firms.

A third pair of essays deals with policy responses to terrorism risks. A central theme of these analyses is that protective actions by one party have fundamental effects on the risks posed to others. Making airlines immune to terrorist attack may shift the terrorism attacks elsewhere, diminishing the net improvement in security. The papers included here examine how resources should be targeted given these offsetting effects.

Contributors to this volume include J. David Cummins, Neil A. Doherty, Baruch Fischhoff, Geoffrey Heal, HowardKunreuther, Cass R. Sunstein, W. Kip Viscusi, and Richard J. Zeckhauser, among others.