Viscusi

Murphy and Topel (2005) cite Viscusi (1993) and Viscusi and Aldy (2003) as leading sources. 

Viscusi, W. Kip. 1993. The Value of Risks to Life and Health. Journal of Economic Literature 31 1912-1946. 

Viscusi, W. Kip. 1995. Discounting Health Effects for Medical Decisions, in Valuing Health Care, ed. Frank Sloan, 125-147. Cambridge Cambridge University Press. 

Viscusi, W. Kip, and Joseph E. Aldy. 2003. The Value of a Statistical Life A Critical Review of Market Estimates throughout the World. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 27(l) 5-76. 

Public chemical exposures, by definition, cause everyone to "consume" the same ambient exposure. What should that exposure level be Because the harms from chemical exposure are collectively consumed, the efficient level is that which equates the sum of the marginal harms among those exposed with the marginal benefits of firms thaf emif (Samuelson 1954). Emissions reductions should occur until the abatement costs equal the sum of fhe amounfs that exposed people would pay to avoid (or be willing to accept in compensation for exposure to) a similar known risk in a market setting (Viscusi 1989a Broome 1978). 

Cropper et al. (1992) examined the effects of costs and benefits on EPA decisions, between 1975 and 1989, to suspend the use of pesficides fhaf have been shown to cause cancer in animals. They conclude that the agency does indeed weigh benefits against costs (suspending use only if risks are high and benefits are low) and estimate the cost per cancer case avoided by these pesticide regulations is 35 million, a sum that seems well above the implicit value of approximately 5 million to 6 million that workers place on known death risks (Viscusi 1989a, 81). 

Most cases are settled out of court. Priest and Klein (1984, 2) and Viscusi (1986) report that only about 5 percent of civil disputes ever reach trial the rest are resolved through out-of-court settlement. If the legal disputes and trial cases were randomly chosen, inferences about the optimality of the litigation system could be made from trial resolution data. But, since people choose whether to litigate and litigants choose whether to go to trial, the cases that reach trial are not a random sample of disputes (Wittman 1985, 185, 212). As a result, studies of court decisions suffer from selecfion bias. 

Gillette and Krier (1990) single out Zeckhauser as deserving particular scorn for his neoclassical risk analysis. For a concise statement of such an analysis, see Zeckhauser and Viscusi (1990). 

Empirical work about the liability system utilizes several famous data sets. The Insurance Service Office, a research arm of the insurance industry, randomly sampled product liability claims in 1976 and 1977, but the universe represents only claims. Viscusi (1986,1988,1989b) has extensively used these data. The Rand Corporation has assembled the results of all civil jury trials held in federal and superior state courts in Cook County, Illinois, and San Francisco, California, from 1959 through 1984 and issued a series of studies (Peterson 1986). 

Dreyfus, Mark K., and W. Kip Viscusi. 1995. Rates of Time Preference and Consumer Valuations of Automobile Safety and Fuel Efficiency. Journal of Law and Economics 38 79-105. 

Viscusi, W. Kip. 1986. The Determinants of the Disposition of Product liability Qaims and Compensation for Bodily Harm. Journal of Legal Studies 15 321 6. 

Zeckhauser, Richard and W. Kip Viscusi. 1990. Risk within Reason. Science 248 (May 4) 559-64. 

Tislcr, J.M. The Pood and Drug Administration s Perspective on the Modem Hazard Analysis and Crilical Point System." Food Technology, 125 (June 1991). Zeckhauscr. RJ and W.K. Viscusi Risk within Reason. Science. 559 (May 4. 1990). 

Heitz J W, Viscusi ER. The evolving role of spinal agents in acute pain. Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2005 9 17-23. 

Viscusi ER. Emerging techniques for postoperative analgesia in orthopedic surgery. AmJ Orthop. 2004 ... 

Viscusi ER. Emerging techniques in the treatment of postoperative pain. AmJ Health Syst Pharm. 2004 61 (suppl 1) S11 —S14. 

Viscusi ER, Reynolds L, Chung F, et al. Patient-controlled transdermal fentanyl hydrochloride vs intravenous morphine pump for postoperative pain a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2004 291 1333-1341. 

Magat, Wesly and Kip Viscusi (1990) Effectiveness of the EPA s regulatory enforcement The case of industrial effluenct standards Journal of Law and Economics 33(2) 331-361. 

Magat, W.A., W.K. Viscusi, and J. Huber, 1988. Consumer processing of hazard warning information. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1,201-232. 

Viscusi, W.K. 1991. Toward a proper role for hazard warnings in products liability cases. Journal of Products Liability, 13,139-163. 

Moore MJ, Viscusi WK. 2001. Product Liability Entering the Twenty-First Century. AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies Washington, DC. 

Viscusi ER, Gan TJ, Leslie JB, Foss JF, Talon MD, Du W, Owens G (2009) Peripherally acting p-opioid receptor antagonists and postoperative ileus mechanisms of action and clinical applicability. Anesth Analg 108 1811-1822... 

OTA found only one attempt to bring together industrywide data to determine if product liability inhibits pharmaceutical innovation. In a 1991 study, Viscusi and Moore compiled data for pharmaceuticals and several other manufacturing industries for the lfost half of the 1980s on both product liability insurance experience and innovation (501). They concluded that during the period examined pharmaceuticals were both relatively innovative and subject to a volatile liability burden-that do not lend support to the hypothesis that product liability inhibits innovation. However, their study does not control for other factors that might have affected innovation.18 In addition, their examination of industrywide data may obscure differences in access to various types of pharmaceuticals. 

The largest number of liability cases (as suggested in the Rand and GAO data) and the greatest amount of attention to product liability occurred during 1985 and 1986-after the collection of the data that Viscusi and Moore examine. 

Viscusi, Kip W., and Moore, Michael, J., An Industrial Profile of the Links Between Product Liability and Innovation, The Liability Maze The Impact of Liability Law on Safety and Innovation, Robert E. Litan and Peter W. Gruber (eds.)(Washington, DC The Brookings Institution, 1991). 

There is a large and fast-growing literature on the economic value of changes in health risks. The theoretical foundations for wiUingness-to-pay (WTP) measures of risk changes have heen explored and seem to he quite solid (see, for example, Jones-Lee, 1976 Rosen, 1988 Viscusi, 1992, 1993 Johansson, 1995). There are also quite a few empirical studies of the value of changes in health risks. In fact, several different methods, based on behaviour either in actual markets or in hypothetical or constructed markets, have b een used to estimate the value of what is known as a statistical life . 

The reader should note that there is empirical evidence that people tend to overestimate small risks while tending to underestimate large risks (see Viscusi, 1992, Chap. 6, for details). However, this bias in risk perception does not necessarily mean tbat people are biased in their valuation of changes in risks. The empirical evidence in this respect is mixed, as is highlighted by the aforementioned and somewhat contradictory results obtained by Smith and Desvousges (1987) and Horowitz and Carson (1993), respectively. 

The studies by both Jones-Lee et al. (1985) and Smith and Desvousges (1987) concerned mortality risks, but CV studies of morbidity risks are also starting to appear in the literature (see, for example, Berger et al., 1987 Evans and Viscusi, 1991). The contingent valuation method has also been used to evaluate tbe total economic losses from groundwater degradation see pp. 113-16 of this chapter and AppendixS of Chapter 6 for details. There are also experiments with risk-risk trade-offs instead ofWTP (see Viscusi... 

A number of reviews of the value per statistical life in the literature have been carried out see, for example, Fisher et al. (1989), Jones-Lee (1996), Miller (1990) andViscusi (1992,1993). In the survey by Viscusi (1992,1993), the value per statistical life varies between US 0.6 million and US 16.2 million in the surveyed labour market analyses of wage-risk trade-offs, between US 0.07 million and US 4.0 million in the studies of consumer markets, and between US 0.1 million and US 15.6 million in the CV studies (in December 1990 dollars). Viscusi (1992) noted that for labour market studies of wage-risk trade-offs most of the reasonable estimates of the value of life are clustered in the US 3 to US 7 million range (Viscusi, 1992, p. 73). He also noted that this estimate conforms quite well with the results of the large-scale CV studies, whereas the results of the studies of consumer... 

Indirect methods based on market behaviour probably do not capture altruistic values. The issue of altruism has to a large extent been neglected in empbical studies, with the exceptions of that of Jones-Lee et al. (1985), who found that the value per statistical life increased by about a third if (probably paternalistic or safety-oriented) altruism is included, and those of Viscusi et al. (1988) and Johannesson et al. (1996). The investigation of the role of altrirism in the value of health changes is an important issue for future research. 

Viscusi, W. K. (1992). Fatal Tradeoffs. PubUc Private Responsibilities for Risk. Oxford University Press, NewYork. 

Viscusi, W. K. (1993). The value of risks to life and health. Journal of Economic Literature, 31,1912-46. 

Viscusi, W. K., Magat, W. A. and Forrest, A. (1988). Altruistic and private valuations of liskieduction. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 7,227-45. 

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