Reply to the comments on “The devaluation of life”

tive and question the moral integrity of the economic approach. Such a reservation commonly arises within regulatory agencies and for the public when the value of statistical life (VSL) methodology is not fully understood. While VSL methodology is now a mainstream economics research area and is in line with Robinson’s policy analysis prescriptions, she points out that government agencies share a responsibility to communicate to the public the rationale for the methodology and the reasons underlying changes in the VSL measures. Fundamental failures in communication may have contributed to the recent policy debacles involving the use of VSL figures. The historical context of benefit–cost analysis provides a useful starting point for understanding why I advocate the policy application of the VSL measure despite the controversy surrounding these figures. Both Carruthers and Fourcade discuss the historical development of benefit–cost analysis, which was introduced as a policy evaluation tool within the context of public works projects. The Army Corps of Engineers and the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation have long assessed the economic benefits and costs of dams and related water resource projects and have used these estimates to justify the efforts, which are required by legislation to meet the test that a project’s benefits exceed the costs. Critiquing these economic assessments was my first published encounter with the cost–benefit methodology. In Berkman and Viscusi (1973), we concluded that many of the purported economic benefits calculated by the Bureau of Reclamation were overstated. But more importantly, we found that while the adverse ecological consequences of the dams were discussed in the policy assessments, those effects were subsequently easily ignored because no monetary value was attached to them. One lesson I derived from this experience is that monetizing difficult-to-quantify outcomes does not devalue them but rather makes it possible for such effects to be treated as just as real and consequential as more conventional economic effects. Fourcade’s concern with the moral issues involved in valuing lives echoes the concerns formerly expressed by regulatory agencies. However, attempts to evade the intrinsic valuations of life that are implicit in the design of risk regulations have led to comparative neglect of lives in much the same way that adverse environmental consequences of dams