Although wage rates are lower when employers have monopsony power, we find that the value of a statistical life (VSL) is not reduced when labor markets are more concentrated. Because the estimated VSL is the product of the wage and the wage-risk tradeoff rate, a greater tradeoff rate in highly concentrated U.S. labor markets produces a larger VSL. The general relationship we find is robust with respect to different labor market data. Our results provide the first evidence contradicting policy-related concerns that the VSL is lower in monopsonistic labor markets. The average VSL is often about $13 million (USD 2022) both for the full sample and at the median market concentration level, and it does not decline at higher levels of HHI.

This paper combines the revealed preference estimates gathered for the OECD's (2025) Report on Mortality Risk Valuation in Policy Assessment with the meta-analytic database used in Viscusi and Masterman (2017a) and other VSL meta-analyses to explore developments in the VSL literature. We estimate random effect, fixed effect, and quantile regression models to examine the income elasticity of the VSL. Across all specifications, the estimated income elasticity of the VSL is not statistically distinguishable from 1, with point estimates ranging from 0.7 to 1.0. The analysis also identifies systematic differences across estimation contexts. Consumer market studies, which have not been included in previous VSL meta-regression analyses, yield VSL estimates that are significantly lower than labor market estimates, even after controlling for income differences between study samples. VSL estimates in our preferred specification range from $362,000 (in 2022 U.S. dollars) in low-income countries to $10.8 million in high-income countries, with a global average of approximately $3.8 million. The preferred VSL estimates are broadly consistent with the OECD report's benchmarks and support the use of income-adjusted VSLs in regulatory benefit-cost analysis.

There is substantial heterogeneity in the rate of compensation that workers receive for fatality risks. The wage-risk tradeoff rate given by the value of a statistical life (VSL) is about 14 million (2022 USD) for workers generally, but it could be higher or lower than the average amount depending on worker preferences and job opportunities. This article finds that Black workers have a VSL below the national average based on several different specifications. The extent of the estimated difference depends on the degree of refinement of the fatality risk measure. Furthermore, the results suggest that Black workers do not face the same wage offer curve as do White workers; instead, Black workers appear to face an offer curve that is both shifted lower and flatter than the offer curve for White workers. In contrast, Hispanic workers consistently have a VSL that is above the national average, and there is no evidence in the full sample to suggest that Hispanics face a different wage offer curve than non-Hispanics. The results are borne out using two different fatality risk measures and based on either the general labor market or restricting the analysis to blue-collar workers only.

U.S. government agencies use estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to monetize mortality risk impacts of government policies. A recent meta-analysis by the OECD has reviewed VSL studies based on stated preference methods and revealed preference evidence from the labor market and consumer decisions. This article examines the U.S. studies considered in the OECD meta-analysis as well as those from prior VSL meta-analyses, including Viscusi and Masterman (2017a) and OECD (2012). After excluding studies of the VSL for the military, the average VSL estimates are similar to those used by U.S. government agencies. The estimated income elasticity of the VSL for the U.S. has a value of 0.51 for the pooled sample in the random effects regressions, 0.56 in the pooled sample in the fixed effects regressions, a median value of 0.56 to 0.58 in the quantile regressions.

Internal investigations into allegations of workplace misconduct are undertaken on a confidential basis. But confidentiality cannot be assured. Investigated employees may be revealed by the investigation, including by word of mouth and by disclosure requirements to future potential employers. Based on an experiment fielded on a large nationally representative sample, this study provides the first evidence of direct employment harm to an employee investigated for workplace misconduct or sexual harassment. Subjects express considerable opposition to a callback of applicants who were investigated for workplace misconduct, even when the investigation did not find misconduct. The findings add to the evidence documenting that any association with stigma harms employment prospects.

Daniel Kahneman, often in collaboration with Amos Tversky, developed foundational frameworks for understanding human decision-making. Building on that tradition, this article proposes that individuals’ ex ante assessments of the likelihood of good and bad outcomes serve as reference points that shape the ex post utility of lottery outcomes. In prospect theory, prior holdings act as reference points for evaluating outcomes—but probabilities themselves play no such role. This article introduces Managed Expectations Theory, which rests on two core hypotheses: Supporting this conjecture, the good outcomes participants labeled as “likely” occurred far more often than the bad outcomes they labeled as “likely.” These created likelihoods help explain a central feature of prospect theory’s probability weighting function: the underestimation of high-probability good events and the overestimation of low-probability bad events.

Heat-related mortality risks are a substantial component of the looming costs of climate change in the United States and globally. This article presents the results from a risk-risk survey to test whether U.S. respondents place a valuation premium on mortality risks from heat relative to cancer and transportation risks. The questionnaire exploits exogenous shocks to temperatures during a heat wave and randomized elements to further test whether preferences vary with heat exposure or the age of individuals exposed to heat risks. The results provide strong evidence that there is no valuation premium in the U.S. for heat-related risks. Subjects valued cancer risks twice as highly as heat and transportation risks, the latter of which are a common benchmark for general traumatic fatalities. While there is some evidence that subjects value heat risks more when exposed to a heat shock of approximately 3–4 °C, the size of the differential is too small to establish a statistically significant heat risk premium. Finally, subjects’ responses demonstrate no differential valuation of mortality risks to seniors versus the general population based on the preferences of the general population or the senior subsample.

This article presents my 2023 peer review panel comments on the 2023 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-4 and offers recommendations for future revisions of this circular. The Prologue section introduces my official peer review comments and indicates how the structure of my comments was tailored to the guidelines established by the OMB. The main section consists of my 2023 peer review comments as they were submitted to OMB. I recommended changes in the draft Circular A-4 to increase the discount rate from the 1.7% rate that OMB proposed, to report domestic benefits whenever global benefits are reported, to adopt a behavioral transfer test for the use of behavioral economics findings, to update the procedures for estimating the value of a statistical life, and to abandon the proposed distributional weights. The most problematic component of the new Circular A-4 is the OMB distributional weights, which will shift the role of benefit–cost analyses away from the current role of providing an efficiency-oriented test. The Epilogue to my comments summarizes how the final version of Circular A-4 differs from the draft version and how future administrations might revise Circular A-4 after President Trump rescinded it.

Mortality risk reductions have a prominent role in the assessment of government regulations. To provide guidance to agencies in monetizing these effects, US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-4 has indicated that a risk trade-off approach is appropriate for assessing the value of a statistical life (VSL) and the value of a statistical life-year (VSLY). This article explains the OMB guidance and indicates how agencies might develop these empirical values. Particularly when valuing risks of traumatic injuries, we favor reliance on revealed preference evidence based on labor-market studies that draw on the most reliable evidence on occupational fatality risks. We further propose basing estimates of the VSLY and the income elasticity of the VSL on hedonic wage studies. Stated preference evidence may also be instructive in valuing mortality risks such as cancer and other illnesses that involve a long-term morbidity component.

Our research reviews theory and evidence in the economics literature to provide a standard value of a statistical life (VSL) applicable to the Department of Defense (DOD). We follow Viscusi (Best estimate selection bias in the value of a statistical life, Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis , 9(2), 205–246, 2018a) by conducting a meta-analysis of 1,025 VSL estimates from 68 different labor market studies and find a best-set average VSL estimate of $11.8 million (US$2021) across all studies. For DOD analysts and practitioners, we advocate using our best-set VSL estimate for the vast majority of benefit–cost analyses (BCAs) within the DOD. In addition to providing a VSL benchmark to use in DOD BCAs, we disaggregate casualty types and provide a range of VSL estimates to use in sensitivity analyses. Employing restricted data from the DOD on over 6,700 US military fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2021, we show that (1) fatalities are highly concentrated among young, White and enlisted males, and that (2) the Army and Marines account for the vast majority of the fatality totals (73 and 22%, respectively), in contrast to the low number of fatalities (<5%) in the Air Force and Navy. The monetized cost of US military fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq would involve individual VSL levels that range from $3.2 to $27.6 million per statistical life (US$2021), after applying standard pay grade and income adjustments.

The November 2023 revision to OMB Circular A-4 expands upon past guidance on distributional assessment in regulatory impact analysis and adds new options for conducting it, such as the use of distributional weights based on the marginal utility of income. This note explores the implications of key changes suggested in the 2023 guidelines and addresses modeling and data challenges that could yield recommendations for future revisions. We suggest that progress in improving distributional assessment in regulatory impact analysis is most likely if federal agencies collaborate with the National Science Foundation to produce model distributional analyses for different types of regulations.

In 2023, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidance documents that specified new procedures for assessing prospective government regulations (Circular A-4) and economic policies more generally (Circular A-94). These revisions to long-standing guidance were not minor updates but shifted policy analyses from an efficiency-oriented perspective to a redistributive approach. OMB broadened the guidelines for reporting distributional consequences of policies and also specified how policy impacts on different income groups should be weighted. The weights assume that the social welfare function is governed by the sum of identical individual utility functions, each of which exhibits a substantial rate of diminishing marginal utility of income. The resulting weights provide a premium for households below the median income level and a considerable penalty for those at higher income levels. Application of the weights to property losses creates potentially substantial inefficiencies. If based on current empirical evidence on the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life rather than assuming that there is a complete offset of the weights, application of the weights to mortality risk valuation would generate inequities in protection.

In the span of ten days, the United States experienced two of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. The first mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, claimed the lives of ten people and left three more injured-mostly elderly shoppers. The second mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, took the lives of nineteen students and two of their teachers. Another fifteen mass shootings occurred in that same ten-day span in which another ten people died, and sixty-nine others were wounded. There were also 1,300 firearm deaths from homicides and suicides in the same span of time. Policy initiatives that could potentially reduce mass shootings and other firearm violence include universal background checks, assault weapon and high-capacity magazine bans, and extreme risk protection orders. This Article examines these measures from two vantage points. First, if these policies were adopted, would they be effective in reducing mass shootings? Aspirational claims of likely beneficial impacts are less meaningful than insights derived from a track record of policy performance. A detailed examination of the empirical evidence on experience with these policies suggests that the efforts offer substantial promise but differ in their likely efficacy. For example, the performance of extreme risk protection orders indicates that these laws are more effective at reducing suicides than homicides. Universal background checks and bans of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines offer greater potential along other dimensions of gun violence. Second, even if it is possible to identify potentially effective policies, would these policies have sufficient public support to make them politically viable? This Article reports on new survey evidence indicating that there is widespread support among the public at large for each of these measures. Perhaps surprisingly, there is support for these policies even within subgroups of the population that some might expect to be opposed to gun controls, such as people who voted for Donald Trump or who personally own guns. Current political opposition to reform efforts stems from a minority of the populace. Notwithstanding the general public support for gun controls, many elected officials oppose these efforts even in light of jarring instances of gun violence and the sobering statistics they generate. The political response to the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde did, however, provide some evidence of progress. Shortly after these mass shootings, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act-the first major gun control legislation enacted in the past thirty years. This Act includes some beneficial provisions, such as offering support to states enacting extreme risk protection order laws, but it does not diminish the need for the more sweeping measures analyzed here. This Article documents the public support for and evidence of efficacy of policy options that can serve as the basis for future legal reforms.

The considerable literature on the value of a statistical life (VSL) documents the wage-mortality risk trade-offs for the working population. Regulatory analyses often must monetize risks to populations at the tails of the age distribution. Because of the longer life expectancy for children, there have been proposals to add a premium to their VSL, which would generate an inconsistency with revealed preference estimates of the VSL trajectory over the life cycle. The shorter life expectancy among older people has led to various arbitrary senior discounts for seniors' life expectancy. Application of the value of a statistical life year (VSLY) can address valuation of small changes in life expectancy. Examples of inappropriate age adjustments that we discuss include practices by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In 2023, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidance documents that specified new procedures for assessing prospective government regulations (Circular A-4) and economic policies more generally (Circular A-94). These revisions to long-standing guidance were not minor updates but shifted policy analyses from an efficiency-oriented perspective to a redistributive approach. OMB broadened the guidelines for reporting distributional consequences of policies and also specified how policy impacts on different income groups should be weighted. The weights assume that the social welfare function is governed by the sum of identical individual utility functions, each of which exhibits a substantial rate of diminishing marginal utility of income. The resulting weights provide a premium for households below the median-income level and a considerable penalty for those at higher-income levels. Application of the weights to property losses creates potentially substantial inefficiencies. If based on current empirical evidence on the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life rather than assuming that there is a complete offset of the weights, application of the weights to mortality risk valuation would generate inequities in protection.

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The unprecedented occupational risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic prompted employers to boost wages and federal authorities to propose hazard pay policies. This article estimates a market-based compensating differential for workers facing elevated risks through contact with the public using CPS employment data for 2019-2020 and occupational characteristic data from the US Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network. The estimated premium for exposure was roughly $820 overall and $1000 for essential workers. These premiums fall short of those proposed-but not enacted-by the federal government and are more commensurate with estimates of the value of a statistical life than were the federal proposals.