Behavioral Bias in Occupational Fatality Risk: Theory, Evidence, and Implications

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Perry SingletonFollow

Description/Abstract

Behavioral bias in occupational fatality risk is introduced to the theoretical framework of hedonic wages, yielding an endogenous risk ceiling that increases social welfare. Empirically, bias is most evident among workers with no high school diploma, who do not report relatively greater exposure to death in high fatality rate occupations. These findings suggest that extant population estimates of value of statistical life are biased downwards and should be factored by at least 1.35. Under reasonable assumptions, simulations suggest an optimal risk ceiling between 73.0 to 85.9 percentile of the population distribution of occupational fatality risk.

Document Type

Working Paper

Date

11-2021

Keywords

Compensating Wage Differentials, Value of Statistical Life, Workplace Safety, Occupational Safety

Language

English

Series

Working Papers Series

Disciplines

Economic Policy | Economics | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

ISBN

1525-3066

Additional Information

Working paper no. 242

Recommended Citation

Singleton, Perry, "Behavioral Bias in Occupational Fatality Risk: Theory, Evidence, and Implications" (2021). Center for Policy Research. 374.
https://surface.syr.edu/cpr/374

Source

Submission

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.