Risky Transportation Choices and the Value of a Statistical Life

Gianmarco León-Ciliotta () and Edward Miguel

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2017, vol. 9, issue 1, 202-28

Abstract: This paper exploits an unusual transportation setting to generate some of the first revealed preference value of a statistical life (VSL) estimates from a low-income setting. We estimate the trade-offs individuals are willing to make between mortality risk and cost as they travel to and from the international airport in Sierra Leone. The setting and original dataset allow us to address some typical omitted variable concerns, and also to compare VSL estimates for travelers from different countries, all facing the same choice situation. The average VSL estimate for African travelers in the sample is US$ 577,000 compared to US$ 924,000 for non-Africans.

JEL-codes: I12 J17 O15 O18 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20160140
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20160140 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... TvSt8yMmIZryeqdKQ5dJ (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... 7bduItZE0iQt7U5__Ymq (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... eTs9wyd0XuX5_qvlP0Qy (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Risky Transportation Choices and the Value of a Statistical Life (2017)
Working Paper: Risky Transportation Choices and the Value of Statistical Life (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:202-28

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().