wheat from chaff meta analysis as quantitative literature review abstract this paper presents and develops a quantitative method of literature reviewing and evaluating empirical research meta regression analysis or mra economics is theory driven yet we must learn empirically if economics is to advance mra offers a more objective statistical method to summarize our empirical knowledge and to explain the wide study to study variation in economic research mra is used to assess the evidence for ricardian equivalence and its findings are contrasted to those of conventional narrative review furthermore mra establishes a platform from which to distinguish genuine empirical effect from the exploitable specification error that infests applied econometrics

asymmetry in retail wholesale and shipping point pricing for fresh vegetables the linkage among retail wholesale and shipping point prices for a select group of fresh vegetables is measured using wolffram s asymmetry model procedures for dealing with discontinuous time series are shown and granger s causality test is used to show the direction of the price linkage wholesale prices are shown to lead both retail and shipping point prices asymmetry in the retail wholesale response indicates that wholesale price decreases are reflected at the retail more so than are wholesale price increases wholesale price decreases are more fully passed through to the shipping point relative to wholesale increases

environmental pricing of externalities from different sources of electricity generation in chile abstract the rapid increase in electricity demand in chile means a choice must be made between major investments in renewable or non renewable sources for additional production current projects to develop large dams for hydropower in chilean patagonia impose an environmental price by damaging the natural environment on the other hand the increased use of fossil fuels entails an environmental price in terms of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change this paper studies the debate on future electricity supply in chile by investigating the preferences of households for a variety of different sources of electricity generation such as fossil fuels large hydropower in chilean patagonia and other renewable energy sources using double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation a novel advanced disclosure method and internal consistency test are used to elicit the willingness to pay for less environmentally damaging sources policy results suggest a strong preference for renewable energy sources with higher environmental prices imposed by consumers on electricity generated from fossil fuels than from large dams in chilean patagonia policy results further suggest the possibility of introducing incentives for renewable energy developments that would be supported by consumers through green tariffs or environmental premiums methodological findings suggest that advanced disclosure learning overcomes the problem of internal inconsistency in sb db estimates

a target group specific approach to green power retailing students as consumers of renewable energy an extensive body of literature exists on the obstacles that have to be overcome in green power retailing in this article target group specific marketing is evaluated as a strategy to increase the share of residential customers of green power a sample of students in the city of freiburg germany was interviewed in order to assess their awareness of environmental issues their willingness to change to green power products and to better understand individual hindrances in changing the power supplier the analysis shows that students are highly positive towards green power products but for several reasons difficult to reach in marketing campaigns aspects to be considered in addressing this consumer group include the students particular expectations towards green products their living conditions price sensitivity and their perception of the relative effort involved in changing the power provider

sequence effects in the valuation of multiple environmental programs using the contingent valuation method in contingent valuation the willingness to pay for hypothetical programs may be affected by the order in which programs are presented to respondents with inclusive lists economic theory suggests that sequence effects should be expected however when policy makers allocate public budgets to several environmental programs they may be interested in assessing the value of the programs without the valuations being affected by the order in which the programs are presented using single bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions we show that if respondents have the possibility to revise their willingness to pay answers sequence effects are mitigated

vertical price transmission in the egyptian tomato sector after the arab spring this study assesses price transmission along the egyptian tomato food marketing chain in the period that followed the arab spring which accentuated economic precariousness in egypt static and tim

asymmetric quantile analysis of the swedish mortgage price discovery process based on swedish banking data we discover robust and significantly positive asymmetric price transmission apt effects over all analysed regression quantiles of our mortgage interest rates with even larger positive apt for the higher percentiles the analysis was enabled through unique access to a swedish bank s seb own records of their true borrowing costs our central contribution is that there is a higher propensity for the bank to rapidly increase its mortgage interest rates for customers following an increase in its borrowing costs compared with the propensity for the bank to decrease its customers mortgage rates subsequent to a corresponding borrowing cost decrease

social demand for electricity from forest biomass in spain does payment periodicity affect the willingness to pay in this article we analyze social preferences for a partial substitution programme of electricity generated by conventional energy sources for energy generated from a local renewable energy source such as forest biomass this analysis sets arguments in favour of accelerating the introduction of this renewable technology in the spanish electricity system simultaneously two methodological goals concerning the contingent valuation method are discussed in the first one we analyze if there are statistical differences in the willingness to pay wtp when a single or a double bounded format is employed to ask the valuation question results show that wtp estimates from single and double bounded significantly differ in the second one we analyze the effect of the periodicity of the payment vehicle on the estimates of welfare change the timeframe specification of the payment vehicle has been scarcely studied and this fact constitutes the main contribution of this paper to the specialized literature results show that periodicity influences upon the probability to favour the proposed change the periodicity does not affect to the mean wtp obtained in the single bounded format but there are statistical differences in the double bounded format these results might be explained by the presence of yea saying and payment scale bias

willingness to pay for renewable energy primary and discretionary choice of british households for micro generation technologies this paper documents the policy context of renewable energy production in the european union the research adopts a choice experiment approach to investigate households wtp for these renewable energy technologies in the uk the micro generation technologies comprise solar photovoltaic micro wind solar thermal heat pumps and biomass boilers and pellet stoves the study compares the results from conditional and mixed logit models which estimate the distribution of utility coefficients and then derives wtp values as a ratio of the attribute coefficient to the price coefficient with a model in which the wtp distribution is estimated directly from utility in the money space the results suggest that whilst renewable energy adoption is significantly valued by households this value is not sufficiently large for the vast majority of households to cover the higher capital costs of micro generation energy technologies

consumers willingness to pay for green electricity a meta analysis of the literature at present electricity generated from power plants using renewable sources costs more than electricity generated from power plants using conventional fuels consumers bear these expenses directly or indirectly through higher prices for renewable energy or taxes the number of studies published over the last few years focusing on people s preferences for renewables has increased steadily making it more and more difficult to identify key explanatory factors that determine people s willingness to pay wtp for renewables we present results of a meta regression on valuation of consumer preferences for a larger share of renewable energy in their electricity mix our meta regression results reveal a number of important factors that explain the differences in wtp values for renewable energy different valuation methods show widely different values with choice experiments producing the highest estimates our results further indicate that consumers wtp for green electricity differs by source with hydropower being the least valued variables that are often omitted from primary valuation studies are important in explaining differences in values these variables describe individual and household characteristics as well as information on the type of power plant that will be replaced by renewables further the marginal effect of a survey conducted in the us is pronounced we also assess the potential for using the results for out of sample value transfer and find a median error of 21 c 2015 elsevier b v all rights reserved

trading off positive and negative service changes in childcare a choice experiment using a latent class modelling approach theoretically the choice of childcare mode should be influenced by the quality of the childcare attributes however such preference relations have been difficult to identify in past studies one

meta analytic benefit transfer of outdoor recreation economic values testing out of sample convergent validity a benefit transfer approach to recreationeconomic valuation using meta analysis isexamined since the meta regression modeltakes into account some of the study specificeffects on willingness to pay wtp estimates benefit transfer using meta analysis couldyield a valid wtp estimate of unstudiedrecreation resources the convergent validityof the meta analytic benefit transfer is testedusing out of sample original studies from theu s the analyses are performed usingpercentage difference paired t test regression and correlation tests the testsreveal mixed results on convergence betweenestimated wtp using meta analytic benefittransfer function btf and out of sampleoriginal wtp values there is a fairly highpercentage difference between the estimated andoriginal wtp values 80 88 and the meandifferences are statistically significant asshown by paired t tests however correlationand regression results consistently showsignificant positive relationships betweennational btf estimated and original wtp valuesindicating some level of convergence theresults show that the national btf outperformthe regional btf indicating a potential of thenational btf for recreation benefit transferwhen a first best primary valuation study isnot affordable

the value of a statistical life evidence from panel data abstract we address long standing concerns in the literature on compensating wage differentials the econometric properties of the estimated value of statistical life vsl and the wide range of such estimates we confront prominent econometric issues using panel data a more accurate fatality risk measure and systematic application of panel data estimators controlling for measurement error endogeneity latent individual heterogeneity possibly correlated with regressors state dependence and sample composition yields vsl estimates of 4 million to 10 million the comparatively narrow range clarifies the cost effectiveness of regulatory decisions most important econometrically is controlling for latent heterogeneity less important is how one does it

valuation of environmental and societal trade offs of renewable energy sources abstract use of renewable energy sources is one solution to decrease green house gas emissions and the use of polluting fossil fuels renewables differ in their environmental and societal impacts and to design sound renewable energy policy societies need to assess the trade offs between alternative sources to enable the evaluation and comparison of renewable energy production alternatives in finland this paper applies the choice experiment to elicit the monetary information on people s preferences for four renewable energy sources wind power hydro power and energy from crops and wood and considers four impacts of energy production effects on biodiversity local jobs carbon emissions and household s electricity bill the nested logit analysis reveals that higher income male gender young age and pro environmental attitude increase the probability to choose renewable energy instead of the current energy mix wind power is on average the most popular renewable energy technology but regional differences exist biodiversity deterioration should be avoided the national aggregate willingness to pay based on stated preferences rather than preferences revealed by actual market behavior for a combination of renewable energy technologies that corresponds to finland s climate change and energy policy is over 500 million euros

willingness to pay for ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation assessing the willingness to pay wtp of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs this paper contributes to the literature on the wtp for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating in addition to global benefits the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation it does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies the contingent valuation method is used to elicit the wtp for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the basque country spain results show that wtp estimates are 53 73 higher when ancillary benefits are considered

validity of discrete choice experiments evidence for health risk reduction there is growing interest in discrete choice experiment dce as a method to elicit consumers preferences in the health care sector increasingly this method is used to determine willingness to pay wtp for health related goods however its external validity in the health care domain has not been investigated until now this paper examines the external validity of dce concerning the reduction of a health risk convergent validity is examined by comparing the value of a statistical life with other preference elicitation techniques such as revealed preference criterion validity is shown by comparing wtp values derived from stated choices in the experiment with those derived from actual choices made by the same individuals both tests provide strong evidence in favour of external validity of the dce method

the effects of information on willingness to pay values of endangered species the contingent valuation method cvm has been employed in several research studies to measure the economic value of environmental commodities brookshire kramer and mercer loehman park and boldt lohr battard and bath the use of cvm allows for flexibility and for application to a wide range of environmental amenities not only those that can be measured in conjunction with some marketable goods however because of its hypothetical character the validity of cvm is often disputed a structural element that might have an especially strong influence on cvm valuation is the contingent market information structure bergstorm stoll and randall information content and presentation in contingent markets are controlled by the researcher the design of an information structure can influence a participant s cognitive valuation process and in turn final revealed valuations information is thus conceptualized as an input into the cognitive decision process of which stated valuations are the final result the role of information in a contingent valuation methodology is extremely important because it conveys the knowledge of an environmental issue with which the respondent will assimilate and base value judgment on this research study proposes that information disclosure can influence an individuals reported willingness to pay wtp values for the preservation of an endangered species the means by which information is disclosed by the researcher is critical in the valuation process new information disclosed about an ecological good might affect the wtp behavi r of the individuals kula

asymmetry in farm retail price transmission for major dairy products an econometric model is used to estimate the net relationship between changes in the farm level price of milk and changes in the retail prices of four major dairy products fluid milk butter cheese and ice cream results indicate that the farm retail price transmission process in the dairy sector is asymmetric retail dairy product prices adjust more rapidly and more fully to increases in the farm price of milk than to decreases the role in pricing asymmetry of retail demand versus farm supply shifts is tested via a chow type test asymmetry is tested using the houck procedure for estimating nonreversible functions

citizen versus consumer challenges in the uk green power market abstract this paper investigates the potential advantages and disadvantages of green power products as opposed to the traditional fossil fuel levy which was the uk s chosen tax regime as a means of developing renewable energy in the uk willingness to pay for electricity generated from renewables is investigated results indicate that willingness to pay varies with social status and income however results demonstrate that there is a significant minority in full support of some sort of fiscal initiative electricity generated from renewables is a concept supported by the majority however given the stated willingness to pay it is unlikely that any new renewable capacity will result from green tariff schemes in the near term it is concluded that the green citizen must continue to co exist with the green power purchaser if the uk is to make any significant improvement in the contribution of renewable energy to electricity demand the authors would like to acknowledge the support of irene lorenzoni and jane powell of the centre for social and economic research on the global environment university of east anglia leicester energy efficiency advice centre and leicester energy agency

can renewable energy be financed with higher electricity prices evidence from a spanish region abstract in this paper we estimate the willingness to pay for mix of renewable sources of electric power by means of a discrete choice experiment survey conducted in spain in 2010 two main categories of power supply attributes are explored source of renewable power wind solar and biomass and the origin of such power the findings suggest that most consumers are not willing to pay a premium for increases in the shares of renewable in their electricity mix for two of the three renewable sources considered wind and biomass an increase of the renewable mix would require a discount instead we record positive willing to pay for increases in the share of both solar power and locally generated power however preferences for types of renewable solar and wind are found to be heterogeneous by classifying respondents in two groups according to the implied importance of the share of renewable sources in their power mix we identify a market segment consisting of 20 of respondents that could promote renewable energy in the absence of subsidies this is because such a segment shows willingness to pay higher than the current feed in tariffs

does asymmetry in price transmission exist in the rice market in sri lanka abstractthis study analyses asymmetry in price transmission between wholesale and retail rice markets in sri lanka using the threshold autoregressive model we found that the wholesale and the retail rice markets in sri lanka are integrated with price changes moving from the wholesale to the retail market however the price transmission process is asymmetric in particular price increases at the wholesale market transmit immediately to the retail market while price decreases transmit more slowly parameter stability test and follow up analysis indicated that the price transmission process is asymmetric only during periods of price surges suggesting that the rice market is not efficient during these periods

random preferences towards bioenergy environmental externalities a case study of woody biomass based electricity in the southern united states article i nfo this paper contrasts alternate methodological approaches of investigating public preferences the random parameter logit rpl where tastes and preferences of respondents are assumed to be heterogeneous and the conditional logit cl approach where tastes and preferences remain fixed for individuals we conducted a choice experiment to assess preferences for woody biomass based electricity in arkansas florida and virginia reduction of co2 emissions and improvement of forest habitat by decreasing risk of wildfires and pest outbreaks were presented to respondents as attributes of using green electricity the results indicate that heterogeneous preferences might be a better fit for assessing preferences for green electricity all levels of both attributes were positive contributors to welfare but they were no statistically significant respondents expressed a positive mean marginal willingness to pay wtp for each attribute level the total wtp for green electricity per kilowatt hour was 0 049 kwh or 40 5 per capita year 1 when converted into future total annual expenditures

asymmetry in beef lamb and pork farm retail price transmission in australia abstract the hypothesis of asymmetry in price transmission within the australian meat market is tested using monthly data for beef lamb and pork prices at different market levels over the period 1971 1988 the results indicate that asymmetrical price response is a strategy used by beef and lamb retailers and wholesalers to adjust to changing input prices but not by pork retailers and wholesalers this difference is perhaps unexpected given the similarity in behaviours relating to price levelling in this market the high cross price elasticities of demand between these meats and the relatively greater degree of concentration in the pork market

environmental value transfer state of the art and future prospects abstract the main objectives of the paper are to 1 give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer 2 discuss its prospects and potential role in cba as a decision support tool and 3 provide further guidelines for proper use and application environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts the technique is controversial not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors this paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked it is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time

what is the meaning of statistical life benefit cost analysis in the time of covid 19 efforts to support public policy decisions need to be conducted carefully and thoughtfully recent efforts to estimate the social benefits of reductions in mortality risks associated with covid 19 interventions are likely understated there are large uncertainties over how much larger the social benefits could be this raises questions about how helpful conventional approaches to valuing mortality and morbidity risks for benefit cost analyses can be in contexts such as the current crisis

econometric models of asymmetric price transmission abstract in this paper we review the existing empirical literature on price asymmetries in commodities providing a way to classify and compare different studies that are highly heterogeneous in terms of econometric models type of asymmetries and empirical findings relative to the previous literature this paper is novel in several respects first it presents a detailed and updated survey of the existing empirical contributions on price asymmetries in the transmission mechanism linking input prices to output prices second this paper presents an extension of the traditional distinction between long run and short run asymmetries to new categories of asymmetries such as contemporaneous impact distributed lag effect cumulated impact reaction time equilibrium and momentum equilibrium adjustment path regime effect regime equilibrium adjustment path each empirical study is then critically discussed in the light of this new classification of asymmetries third this paper evaluates the relative merits of the most popular econometric models for price asymmetries namely autoregressive distributed lags partial adjustments error correction models regime switching and vector autoregressive models finally we use the meta regression analysis to investigate whether the results of asymmetry tests are not model invariant and find which additional factors systematically influence the rejection of the null hypothesis of symmetric price adjustment the main results of our survey can be summarized as follows i each econometric model is specialized to capture a subset of asymmetries ii each asymmetry is better investigated by a subset of econometric models iii the general significance of the f test for asymmetric price transmission depends mainly on characteristics of the data dynamic specification of the econometric model and market characteristics overall our empirical findings confirm that asymmetry in all its forms is very likely to occur in a wide range of markets and econometric models

the efficiency of the scandinavian banking sector a wavelet quantile regression analysis in this article the scandinavian housing financing market is analysed in order to determine whether the interest rate price discovery processes of denmark norway and sweden are efficient based o

testing for price response asymmetries in the spanish fuel market new evidence from daily data abstract in this work we use daily data to examine pattern asymmetries in the speed of transmission of international wholesale oil prices to spanish retail fuel prices results are robust to two alternative specifications of an asymmetric error correction model for which the presence of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity for disturbances is modeled by a garch 1 1 process evidence indicates that the short term transmission of wholesale prices to retail prices is quite symmetric for both gasoline and diesel fuel nevertheless in contrast to some of the results provided for an earlier period we did not find asymmetries in the speed of retail price responses toward long run equilibrium our evidence also suggests that the use of weekly or lower frequency data is one of the possible explanations for some of the seemingly contradictory results concerning this issue

valuation of small and multiple health risks a critical analysis of sp data applied to food and water safety this study elicits individual risk preferences in the context of an infectious disease using choice experiments a main objective is to examine scope sensitivity using a novel approach our results suggest that the value of a mortality risk reduction vsl is highly sensitive to the survey design our results cast doubt on the standard scope sensitivity tests in choice experiments but also on the validity and reliability of vsl estimates based on stated preference studies in general this is important due to the large empirical literature on non market evaluation and the elicited values central role in policy making

valuing externalities from energy infrastructures through stated preferences a geographically stratified sampling approach abstractthe externalities produced by high voltage transmission lines are multidimensional may strongly depend on the local context and are thus difficult to capture through standard environmental valuation exercises we experiment a gis approach to design a geographically stratified contingent valuation sample of the population resident in infrastructure corridors in a whole region we estimate by means of a binary choice logit model the perceived marginal damage from impacts of power lines on human health the landscape and the environment specific treatment is given to qualitatively different forms of impact namely real estate depreciation versus diffused perception of damage arising at different distances from the lines the set of gis based variables proximity to power lines presence of other infrastructure endowment of natural and built heritage and other local context variables prove to be significant predictors in the utility function of resident households finally we compute simulate

sensitivity of contingent valuation to alternative payment schedules insensitivity to payment schedule wherein respondents do not adequately differentiate between a one time payment and a series of payments may be an important but often overlooked factor in the design interpretation and use of contingent valuation studies several contingent valuation experiments involving a familiar private good and a less familiar environmental commodity indicate that although respondents distinguished between lump sum and periodic payment schedules implicit discount rates were very high suggesting that sensitivity to payment schedule is an important subject for further study

publication selection and the income elasticity of the value of a statistical life abstract 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 25 0 63 there is also clear evidence of the importance of controlling for levels of risk differential publication selection bias and the greater income sensitivity of vsl from stated preference surveys

households willingness to pay for overhead to underground conversion of electricity distribution networks underground low voltage electricity networks have several advantages over overhead networks including reliability of supply safety and improved visual amenity the economic viability of replacing existing overhead networks with new underground networks depends on the value of these benefits to households but no complete value estimates are available in the literature this paper represents a contribution towards addressing this research gap a stated choice survey is used to estimate willingness to pay for undergrounding in established residential areas in canberra australia average willingness to pay is at least a 6838 per household and there is significant variation in preferences over the population the results suggest that benefits would be highest in areas with higher household income and older residents where visual amenity safety tree trimming or restrictions on the use of yard space are of concern

willingness to pay for green electricity in korea a contingent valuation study abstract green electricity is energy that is generated from renewable energy sources such as solar power wind power small scale hydroelectric power tidal power and biomass power these sources mostly do not produce pollutants and are considered environmentally friendly however considering the current state of technology they are more costly government should take visible actions to compensate for the increased production costs this paper attempts to apply a contingent valuation cv method to obtain at least a preliminary evaluation of the benefits that ensue from the introduction of the policy that raises the percentage of green electricity consumption from 0 2 of the total electricity supply to 7 by 2011 overall the cv survey was successful in eliciting the willingness to pay wtp for green electricity considering that the cv method operated within respondents abilities to answer and the wtp estimates were statistically significant the monthly mean wtp estimates from parametric and non parametric methods were krw 1681 usd 1 8 and krw 2072 usd 2 2 respectively the estimates of the annual benefits to relevant residents amounted to krw 150 5 billion usd 157 5 million and krw 185 6 billion usd 194 2 million respectively

modelling zero values and protest responses in contingent valuation surveys in contingent valuation surveys the category of zero bidders refers to individuals that are not willing to pay anything for the programme under analysis specific questions can help to identify true zero values coming from people that are indifferent to the programme separately from protest responses the latter are generally excluded from the analysis this paper introduces a mixture sample selection model that takes into account both zero values and protest responses in the estimates the model is applied to the valuation of a traffic calming scheme aimed at reducing risks for residents in three villages in the north east of england

information bias in contingent valuation effects of personal relevance quality of information and motivational orientation abstract a laboratory experiment examined the potential for information bias in contingent valuation cv consistent with the view that information about a public or private good can function as a persuasive communication willingness to pay wtp was found to increase with the quality of arguments used to describe the good especially under conditions of high personal relevance under low personal relevance wtp for a public but not for a private good was higher when an altruistic as opposed to an individualistic orientation was activated it is concluded that the nature of the information provided in cv surveys can profoundly affect wtp estimates and that subtle contextual cues can seriously bias these estimates under conditions of low personal relevance

do children matter an examination of gender differences in environmental valuation abstract this paper is concerned with the role played by children in a household on choice behaviour related to willingness to pay wtp for environmental goods improvements data from a contingent valuation cvm survey dealing with three environmental improvements are used to examine three hypotheses the first is that after controlling for income individuals with children have higher wtp than childless individuals the second hypothesis is that women with children are willing to pay more for environmental improvements than men with children particularly in the case where there is concern for environmental health risks the third is that childless men and women exhibit significant differences in wtp that arise from greater time constraints faced by women estimated wtp functions are shown to be statistically different for four groups of individuals women with children men with children women without children and men without children parents of either gender are willing to pay more than their childless counterparts valuations of mothers and fathers are statistically different for only one of the three goods being evaluated interestingly it is the fathers mean valuations that are higher this may arise from the fact that these environmental improvements lead to better recreational opportunities and as indicated earlier men are less time constrained further support for this view comes from results that show that valuations of childless men are significantly greater than those for childless women for two goods the paper concludes with some directions for future research in the area

what s to know puzzles in the literature on the value of statistical life notwithstanding the general acceptance of the value of statistical life vsl estimates for policy assessment purposes several important unresolved issues remain first the results from revealed preference studies are systematically higher than those from stated preference studies potentially limiting the usefulness of stated preference studies in generalizing the vsl estimates to different populations and kinds of risks second extrapolating the results of meta analyses to project the vsl for different population groups requires that such generalization be reflective of the underlying economic content of what average vsl estimates reflect third government agencies within and across countries place differing emphasis on types of vsl studies as well as differing reliance on individual studies versus meta analyses usually there is no justification provided for the chosen approach