TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ashenfelter,Orley
AU  - Greenstone,Michael
TI  - Estimating the Value of a Statistical Life: The Importance of Omitted Variables and Publication Bias
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10401
PY  - 2004
Y2  - April 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10401
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10401.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Orley C. Ashenfelter
Industrial Relations Section
Firestone Library
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544
Tel: 609/258-4040
Fax: 609/258-2907
E-Mail: c6789@princeton.edu

Michael Greenstone
MIT Department of Economics
50 Memorial Drive, E52-359
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/452-4127
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: mgreenst@mit.edu
AB  - In this paper we show that omitted variables and publication bias lead to severely biased estimates of the value of a statistical life. Although our empirical results are obtained in the context of a study of choices about road safety, we suspect that the same issues plague the estimation of monetary trade-offs regarding safety in other contexts.
ER  -