Abstract
Man’s increased awareness of and control over his own safety has introduced puzzling questions concerning the value of life. The common practice of comparing projects on the basis of cost per expected life saved has two major inadequacies. First, the value of a change in the risk of death may depend on the level of risk. Secondly, there may be strong interdependencies in the value of risk avoidance to the members of a group. An approach which combines the preferences of individuals for wealth and life-death consequences through a collective utility function is suggested to overcome these deficiencies. A concept of collective risk aversion is introduced to account for differences between collective and individual risk preferences.
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© 1978 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Bodily, S.E. (1978). Evaluating Joint Life-Saving Activities under Uncertainty. In: Zionts, S. (eds) Multiple Criteria Problem Solving. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 155. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46368-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46368-6_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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