An Empirical Model of Demand for Future Health States when Valuing Risk-Mitigating Programs

Trudy Ann Cameron () and J.R. DeShazo
Additional contact information
J.R. DeShazo: School of Public Policy, UCLA

University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers from University of Oregon Economics Department

Abstract: We develop a structural option price model in which individuals choose among competing risk-mitigating programs to alter their probability of experiencing future years in various degraded health states. The novel aspects of this model include separate estimates of the marginal utilities of avoiding years of morbidity and lost life-years. With these marginal utilities, we may evaluate a broad spectrum of probabilistic health outcomes over any period of an individual’s future life. The model also reduces potential biases associated with singleperiod, single-risk models typically used to produce estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) by allowing individuals to substitute risk mitigation across competing sources of risk and across future years of their lives. We evaluate this model using data from a national survey that contains a choice experiment on demand for the mitigation of illness-specific risks.

Keywords: Value of a Statistical Life (VSL); mortality risk; morbidity risk; health; option price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Date: 2004-04-01
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.uor ... lth_State_Demand.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers from University of Oregon Economics Department
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Bill Harbaugh ().