University Distinguished Professor W. Kip Viscusi will deliver his lecture “What’s a Life Worth?” on Thursday, March 15, at 4:00 p.m. at Tulane University’s Murphy Institute in New Orleans, LA.
The Mary C. Parker Yates Lecture, endowed in 1996, is the Murphy Institute’s major public academic event. The Institute exists to help Tulane faculty and students understand economic, moral, and political problems and how these problems have come to be so closely interconnected. Professor Viscusi’s talk will focus on the procedures used to set dollar values for public policies that reduce risks to life and health. In particular, he will focus on his recent research on the effect of age on the value of life.
Professor Viscusi has published estimates of the value of life for the past three decades and is responsible for the government’s adoption of this methodology in benefit-cost analyses. His estimates of the value of risks to life and health have become the standard used throughout the federal government.