The global COVID-19 mortality cost report card: 2020, 2021, and 2022.

The United States is the country with the greatest number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Both the U.S.

The perceived risks of e-cigarettes to others and during pregnancy.

Background: Public Health England has concluded that e-cigarettes are much safer than cigarettes for the user and for secondhand exposures, but it has not reached a definitive conclusion regarding pregnancy risks. How people perceive the risks to others is less well understood.

Methods: This study uses an online UK sample of 1041 adults to examine perceived e-cigarette risks to others and during pregnancy.

Risk-Risk Tradeoffs for Mass Shootings and International Terrorism.

This article elicits information about risk perceptions and risk-risk tradeoffs for mass shootings and international terrorist attacks. These prominent public risks are similar in many respects in that both involve traumatic injuries. One might expect that the risk-risk tradeoff rate would be 1.

Economic lessons for COVID-19 pandemic policies.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses novel health issues. However, the benefits and costs of the pandemic and policies to address it have a familiar economic structure. Chief among the health-related benefits are the monetized values of the U.

Pricing the global health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Policies to address the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) require a balancing of the health risk reductions and the costs of economic dislocations. Application of the value of a statistical life (VSL) to monetize COVID-19 deaths produces a U.S.

Catastrophic Risk: Waking Up to the Reality of a Pandemic?

Will a major shock awaken the US citizens to the threat of catastrophic pandemic risk? Using a natural experiment administered both before and after the 2014 West African Ebola Outbreak, our evidence suggests "no." Our results show that prior to the Ebola scare, the US citizens were relatively complacent and placed a low relative priority on public spending to prepare for a pandemic disease outbreak relative to an environmental disaster risk (e.g.

The impact of cannabis access laws on opioid prescribing.

While recent research has shown that cannabis access laws can reduce the use of prescription opioids, the effect of these laws on opioid use is not well understood for all dimensions of use and for the general United States population. Analyzing a dataset of over 1.5 billion individual opioid prescriptions between 2011 and 2018, which were aggregated to the individual provider-year level, we find that recreational and medical cannabis access laws reduce the number of morphine milligram equivalents prescribed each year by 11.

"Sorry” Is Never Enough: How State Apology Laws Fail to Reduce Medical Malpractice Liability Risk.

Based on case studies indicating that apologies from physicians to patients can promote healing, understanding, and dispute resolution, thirty-nine states (and the District of Columbia) have sought to reduce litigation and medical malpractice liability by enacting apology laws. Apology laws facilitate apologies by making them inadmissible as evidence in subsequent malpractice trials. The underlying assumption of these laws is that after receiving an apology, patients will be less likely to pursue malpractice claims and will be more likely to settle claims that are filed.

The net effects of medical malpractice tort reform on health insurance losses: the Texas experience.

In this paper, we examine the influence of medical malpractice tort reform on the level of private health insurance company losses incurred. We employ a natural experiment framework centered on a series of tort reform measures enacted in Texas in 2003 that drastically altered the medical malpractice environment in the state. The results of a difference-in-differences analysis using a variety of comparison states, as well as a difference-in-difference-in-differences analysis, indicate that ameliorating medical malpractice risk has little effect on health insurance losses incurred by private health insurers.

Recollection Bias and Its Underpinnings: Lessons from Terrorism Risk Assessments.

Recollection bias is the phenomenon whereby people who observe a highly unexpected event hold current risk beliefs about a similar event that are no higher than their recollection of their prior beliefs. This article replicates and extends the authors' previous study of recollection bias in relation to individuals' perceptions of the risks of terrorism attacks. Over 60% of respondents in a national U.

The fatality and morbidity components of the value of statistical life.

The fatality risk-money tradeoff that is the value of a statistical life (VSL) may vary with the nature of the fatality event. While all fatalities involve loss of future life expectancy, the morbidity effects and their duration may differ. This article analyzes fatality risks accompanied by morbidity effects of different duration to disentangle the mortality and morbidity components of VSL using data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI).

The relative weights of direct and indirect experiences in the formation of environmental risk beliefs.

Direct experiences, we find, influence environmental risk beliefs more than the indirect experiences derived from outcomes to others. This disparity could have a rational basis. Or it could be based on behavioral proclivities in accord with the well-established availability heuristic or the vested-interest heuristic, which we introduce in this article.

Publication selection and the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life.

Estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) establish the price government agencies use to value fatality risks. Transferring these valuations to other populations often utilizes the income elasticity of the VSL, which typically draw on estimates from meta-analyses. Using a data set consisting of 101 estimates of the income elasticity of VSL from 14 previously reported meta-analyses, we find that after accounting for potential publication bias the income elasticity of value of a statistical life is clearly and robustly inelastic, with a value of approximately 0.

Assessing whether there is a cancer premium for the value of a statistical life.

This article estimates whether there is a cancer risk premium for the value of a statistical life using stated preference valuations of cancer risks for a large, nationally representative US sample. The present value of an expected cancer case that occurs after a one decade latency period is $10.85m, consistent with a cancer premium that is 21% greater than the median value of a statistical life estimates for acute fatalities.

Heterogeneous rates of time preference and the decision to smoke.

Individuals with higher personal rates of time preference will be more likely to smoke. Although previous studies have found no evidence of a relationship between smoking and rates of time preference, analysis of implicit rates of time preference associated with workers' wage fatality risk trade-offs indicates that smokers have higher rates of time preference with respect to years of life. Current smokers have an implied rate of time preference of 13.

Survey mode effects on valuation of environmental goods.

This article evaluates the effect of the choice of survey recruitment mode on the value of water quality in lakes, rivers, and streams. Four different modes are compared: bringing respondents to one central location after phone recruitment, mall intercepts in two states, national phone-mail survey, and an Internet survey with a national, probability-based panel. The modes differ in terms of the representativeness of the samples, non-response rates, sample selection effects, and consistency of responses.

Variables influencing the neural correlates of perceived risk of physical harm.

Many human activities involve a risk of physical harm. However, not much is known about the specific brain regions involved in decision making regarding these risks. To explore the neural correlates of risk perception for physical harms, 19 participants took part in an event-related fMRI study while rating risky activities.

The mortality cost to smokers.

This article estimates the mortality cost of smoking using the first labor market estimates of the value of statistical life by smoking status. The value of statistical life is $7 million for both smokers and nonsmokers. Using this value in conjunction with the increase in the mortality risk over the life cycle due to smoking, the value of statistical life by age and gender, and information on the number of packs smoked over the life cycle, the private mortality cost of smoking is $222 per pack for men and $94 per pack for women in $2006, based on a 3% discount rate.

Dead reckoning: demographic determinants of the accuracy of mortality risk perceptions.

General patterns of bias in risk beliefs are well established in the literature, but much less is known about how these biases vary across the population. Using a sample of almost 500 people, the regression analysis in this article yields results consistent with the well-established pattern that small risks are overassessed and large risks are underassessed. The accuracy of these risk beliefs varies across demographic factors, as does the switch point at which people go from underassessment to overassessment, which we found to be 1500 deaths annually for the full sample.

Mortality risk perceptions: a Bayesian reassessment.

"This study uses data on perceived and actual mortality risks to test several alternative Bayesian models of the factors influencing risk beliefs. The analysis..

Synthetic risks, risk potency, and carcinogen regulation.

This article analyzes a comprehensive sample of over 350 chemicals tested for carcinogenicity to assess the determinants of the probability of regulation. Controlling for differences in the risk potency and noncancer risks, synthetic chemicals have a significantly higher probability of regulation overall: this is due to the greater likelihood of U.S.

Constructive cigarette regulation.

Professor W. Kip Viscusi argues for a move away from the adversarial approach to tobacco regulation, an approach that is currently embodied in class action lawsuits and the proposed broadening of FDA regulatory power over cigarettes. In this Article, he suggests that the FDA should take a constructive role in fostering technological innovations to promote cigarette safety, in much the same way that the government currently fosters safety improvements in motor vehicles and jobs.

Alternative approaches to valuing intangible health losses: the evidence for multiple sclerosis.

This study uses both risk-risk and risk-dollar approaches to assess intangible health losses associated with multiple sclerosis (MS). Using an estimation approach that adjusts for potential perceptional biases that may effect the expressed risk tradeoffs, we estimated parameters of the utility function of persons with and without MS as well as the degree of subjects" overestimation of the probability of obtaining MS. The sample included subjects from the general population and persons with MS.