Surviving the Titantic Disaster: Economic, Natural and Social Determinants

Bruno Frey, David A Savage and Benno Torgler

Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics

Abstract: The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 took the lives of 68 percent of the people aboard. Who survived? It was women and children who had a higher probability of being saved, not men. Likewise, people traveling in first class had a better chance of survival than those in second and third class. British passengers were more likely to perish than members of other nations. This extreme event represents a rare case of a well-documented life and death situation where social norms were enforced. This paper shows that economic analysis can account for human behavior in such situations.

Keywords: Decision under Pressure; Tragic Events and Disasters; Survival; Quasi-Natural Experiment; Altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-02-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6h24b1vt.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Surviving the Titanic Disaster: Economic, Natural and Social Determinants (2009)
Working Paper: Surviving the Titanic Disaster: Economic, Natural and Social Determinants (2009)
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:cdl:oplwec:qt6h24b1vt

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().