IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0419.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Policy Toward Life Saving: Maximize Lives Saved vs. Consumer Sovereignty

Author

Listed:
  • William Gould
  • Richard Thaler

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical analysis of individual and societal demands for life saving. We begin by demonstrating that the allocation of health expenditures to maximize lives saved may be inconsistent with the willingness-to-pay criterion and consumer sovereignty. We further investigate the effects of information on aggregate willingness to pay. This discussion is related to the concepts of statistical and identified lives. Methods of financing health expenditures are considered. We show that risk averse individuals may reject actuarially fair insurance for treatments of fatal diseases even if they plan to pay for the treatment if they get sick. This result has implications regarding the choice of treatment or prevention. Finally, we examine the importance of the timing of life-saving decisions. A conflict arises between society's preferences before it is known who will be sick and after, even if it is known in advance how many people will be sick.

Suggested Citation

  • William Gould & Richard Thaler, 1980. "Public Policy Toward Life Saving: Maximize Lives Saved vs. Consumer Sovereignty," NBER Working Papers 0419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0419
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0419.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Thaler & Sherwin Rosen, 1976. "The Value of Saving a Life: Evidence from the Labor Market," NBER Chapters, in: Household Production and Consumption, pages 265-302, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Nestor E. Terleckyj, 1976. "Household Production and Consumption," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number terl76-1.
    3. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1971. "The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(4), pages 561-574, September.
    4. Mishan, E J, 1971. "Evaluation of Life and Limb: A Theoretical Approach," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(4), pages 687-705, July-Aug..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Devi, P. Indira & Shanmugam, K.R. & Jayasree, M.G., 2012. "Compensating Wages for Occupational Risks of Farm Workers in India," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 67(2), pages 1-12.
    2. Cropper, Maureen L., 2000. "Has Economic Research Answered the Needs of Environmental Policy?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 328-350, May.
    3. Bond, Timothy N. & Giuntella, Osea & Lonsky, Jakub, 2023. "Immigration and work schedules: Theory and evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    4. Samuel K. ALLEN, 2015. "Struggle for Regulatory Power between States and the US Federal Government: The Case of Workers’ Compensation Insurance 1930-2000," Journal of Economics and Political Economy, KSP Journals, vol. 2(3), pages 351-373, September.
    5. Magnus Johannesson & Bengt Jönsson & Göran Karlsson, 1996. "Outcome measurement in economic evaluation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(4), pages 279-296, July.
    6. Jack E. Triplett, 1983. "Introduction: An Essay on Labor Cost," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Labor Cost, pages 1-60, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Sherwin Rosen, 2002. "Markets and Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 1-15, March.
    8. Agamoni Majumder & S. Madheswaran, 2017. "Meta-analysis of Value of Statistical Life Estimates," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 6(1), pages 110-120, January.
    9. König, Philipp J. & Pothier, David, 2018. "Safe but fragile: Information acquisition, sponsor support and shadow bank runs," Discussion Papers 15/2018, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    10. François Gardes, 2021. "On the value of time and human life," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 21023, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    11. Heine Klaus & Mause Karsten, 2003. "Politikberatung als informationsökonomisches Problem," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 223(4), pages 479-490, August.
    12. Anup Malani & Cynthia Kinnan & Gabriella Conti & Kosuke Imai & Morgen Miller & Shailender Swaminathan & Alessandra Voena & Bartosz Woda, 2024. "Evaluating pricing health insurance in lower-income countries: A field experiment in India," IFS Working Papers W24/33, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    13. Goldstein, Itay & Yang, Liyan, 2019. "Good disclosure, bad disclosure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 118-138.
    14. Baker, Erin, 2005. "Uncertainty and learning in a strategic environment: global climate change," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 19-40, January.
    15. Pakes, Ariel & Schankerman, Mark A., 1978. "The Rate of Obsolescence of Knowledge, Research Gestation Labs, and the Private Rate of Return to Research Resources," Working Papers 78-13, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    16. Matthias Schmidt & Hermann Held & Elmar Kriegler & Alexander Lorenz, 2013. "Climate Policy Under Uncertain and Heterogeneous Climate Damages," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 54(1), pages 79-99, January.
    17. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2019. "Information Design: A Unified Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(1), pages 44-95, March.
    18. Renaud Bourlès & Dominique Henriet, 2012. "Risk-sharing Contracts with Asymmetric Information," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 37(1), pages 27-56, March.
    19. Vernon Ruttan, 1980. "Bureaucratic productivity: The case of agricultural research," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 35(5), pages 529-547, January.
    20. Carrillo, Juan D. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2011. "No trade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 66-87, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0419. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.