received the Policy Field Distinguished Contribution Award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis. Aidan R. Vining is Emeritus CNABS Professor of Business and Government Relations, Simon Fraser University. He is a winner of the John Vanderkamp Prize (Canadian Economics Association) and the J.E. Hodgetts Award (Institute of Public Administration of Canada). He has published widely.
They applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, Dog Economics: Perspectives on Our Canine Relationships, and reported the following:
Page 99 falls in a chapter reporting on original empirical research by one of the authors showing how economists ask people about their willingness to make tradeoffs between money and mortality risk––in this case for their dog! More generally, Dog Economics draws on economic theory and evidence to organize a synthesis of the relationship between dogs and humans. It might (incorrectly, we think) imply a book aimed primarily at professional economists rather than general readers interested in dogs. However, the page 99 chapter provides an accessible explanation of how economists estimate the implicit value people place on their lives and especially the lives of their pet dogs.Learn more about Dog Economics at the Cambridge University Press website.
Economists use a variety of methods to measure the value of statistical life (VSL). The VSL estimates the implicit value an average person places on his or her own life in making decisions that affect his or her own mortality. The VSL is used by regulators to place a monetary value on avoided deaths that are predicted to occur from proposed rules aimed at reducing mortality risk. Rules, such as those that set standards for pet food quality, aim to reduce the mortality risk for dogs: the value of a statistical dog life (VSDL). To value these reductions, however, regulators need a plausible estimate of the VSDL, which is the implicit value that people on average place on the lives of their dog when making decisions relevant to changes in the mortality risk faced by their dogs. The page 99 chapter carefully explains how a survey experiment was used to estimate the VSDL. Interestingly, the VSDL has a number of potential uses related to a dog’s life, such as in determining compensation in cases of the wrongful death of a dog and the allocation of dog custody in divorce cases.
--Marshal Zeringue
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