Resources Repository
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ArticlePublication 2000Valuing Mortality Risk: Theory and Practice
This article discusses the theoretical foundation and empirical methods for estimating the value of a …
This article discusses the theoretical foundation and empirical methods for estimating the value of a statistical life (VSL). VSL is defined by individuals' preferences for small changes in risk and income, and often used by environmental and other economists to measure the monetary value of reduced mortality risk. The article reviews the dependence of VSL on age, income, baseline mortality risk, and latency.
Preferences/Values | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Policy/Regulation | College | Graduate | Critical Thinking/Analysis -
ReviewPublication 1978Basic Principles of ROC Analysis
The limitations of diagnostic "accuracy" as a measure of decision performance require introduction of the …
The limitations of diagnostic "accuracy" as a measure of decision performance require introduction of the concepts of the "sensitivity" and "specificity" yet even these do not provide a unique description of diagnostic performance because they depend on the arbitrary selection of a decision threshold. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is shown to be a simple yet complete empirical description of this decision threshold effect, indicating all possible combinations of the relative frequencies of the…
Test Performance | Clinical Care | Health/Medicine -
BookPublication 1978Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease
This report from the Institute of Medicine, The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery …
This report from the Institute of Medicine, The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease, was written to review and critique the decisions made around the 1976 swine flu threat. In 1976, a small group of soldiers at Fort Dix were infected with a swine flu virus that was deemed similar to the virus responsible for the great 1918-19 world-wide flu pandemic. The U.S. government initiated an unprecedented effort to immunize every American against…
Decision Analysis | Risk Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Health Systems | Policy/Regulation | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | North America