by Amy Wolf
When W. Kip Viscusi watches the heart-pounding television show 24, he may be clutching his fists, poised at the edge of his seat like the rest of us. But the economist isn’t just viewing the intense risks Jack Bauer takes each week – he’s analyzing them.
“I’ve done a lot of work on terrorism risk for the government,” said Viscusi, the University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics and Management. “It would be great to have an economics conference on the choices Jack Bauer makes on 24, between infringing civil liberties and reducing terrorism risks.”
Viscusi would be ideal to lead the conference because he’s one of the world’s leading experts on cost-benefit analysis, especially when dealing with risk and uncertainty.
Viscusi originally planned to be a lawyer, but his path to economics research and teaching was paved when he received an A.B. degree in economics summa cum laude from Harvard and won the awards for best undergraduate thesis and best doctoral dissertation in economics at the university.
Following his junior and senior years of college, Viscusi worked for lawyer and activist Ralph Nader. “That’s when I first crossed economics with risk,” he said.
In the 1980s, Viscusi began using his “value of life” analysis to determine if the lives of older people were worth more or less than those of younger people when it comes to taking risky jobs. Ultimately, he found that the lowest value of life is connected to people in their early 20s “because they’re willing to work really dangerous jobs.”
The “value of life” result is an integral part of Viscusi’s research and has helped determine how stringent the federal government should be in regard to job safety, consumer safety and environmental standards. Viscusi’s value of life estimates are used throughout the federal government by agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency. He currently serves on the EPA’s Homeland Security Committee.
Viscusi is working on research for the EPA to determine the value of clean lakes, rivers and streams to the average person. By running a series of national surveys, Viscusi put a price tag on how much taxpayers are willing to pay for clean water. He found that for every 1 percent improvement in water quality, people are willing to pay an extra $30. Viscusi also has calculated the economic loss Americans have suffered because of the decline in water quality since the 1990s.
“We calculated that we lose more than $20 billion a year in terms of benefits to society from the decline in water quality,” he said.
Much attention has focused on Viscusi’s studies of smoking. In 2002, he published Smoke-Filled Rooms, which analyzed the massive $243 billion Big Tobacco settlement. Viscusi found that smokers cost states more in terms of medical expenses, but because smokers have a shorter life expectancy, they cost states less in terms of nursing home and pension costs. Overall, smokers save society 32 cents a pack from a financial standpoint, he estimates.
An award-winning author with more than 20 books and 265 articles under his belt, Viscusi has served on the editorial boards of more than a dozen highly respected journals and is the founding editor of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty and Foundations and Trends: Microeconomics. Along with his wife, Professor of Law and Economics Joni Hersch, he came to Vanderbilt from Harvard last July to create the country’s first Ph.D. program in law and economics.
“Our idea is to develop an integrated program to train people in law and economics, with a strong orientation toward legal applications,” he said. “So when a student goes out for a job, they’ll be able to say, ‘I know criminal law cold and I’m also the top analyst of crime data out there.’ It makes sense to be an expert in the area you’re analyzing. That’s why it makes sense to combine law and economics.”
In addition to the acclaim Viscusi has received for his academic accomplishments, there is another thing he expresses with confidence. “I’m probably the best bowler on the law faculty,” he said. Viscusi said he started bowling as a child and bowled six days a week when he worked at Duke University. For those thinking about challenging him to a game, Viscusi is happy to analyze the risk in that.