Estimating the value of life expectancy gains in Tanzania using the life satisfaction and model based approaches.

Policymakers in low and lower-middle income countries often face difficult trade-offs between saving lives and livelihoods, as exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, evidence regarding the preferences of the population is often lacking in such settings. In this paper, I estimate the value of an additional year of life expectancy in Tanzania using information on subjective well-being and population mortality. More specifically, I combine age-sex specific subnational estimates of remaining life expectancy with data from a representative household survey, which includes information on consumption expenditures and life satisfaction. This information is then carried forward into a life satisfaction regression to estimate the trade-off between consumption and an additional year of life expectancy. The results imply that a representative individual from the sample would be willing to trade off around 9% of their annual consumption expenditure to obtain an additional year of remaining life expectancy. The estimated values are close to those derived from calibrated models based on different elicitation methods, such as revealed preferences. This suggests that life satisfaction measures could be useful in deriving estimates of the value of longevity changes in environments where traditional methods, such as estimating compensating wage differentials, are difficult to apply.

Multi-attribute COVID-19 policy evaluation under deep uncertainty.

Mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 comes with the evaluation of tradeoffs. However, the exact magnitude of the tradeoffs being made cannot be known ahead of time. There are three major concerns to balance: life, liberty, and economy. Here, we create a multi-attribute utility function including those three attributes and provide reasonable bounds on the weights of each. No one set of weights on the utility function can be considered "correct." Furthermore, the outcomes of each mitigation strategy are deeply uncertain. Not only do we need to take into account the characteristics of the disease, but we also need to take into account the efficacy of the mitigation strategies and how each outcome would be evaluated. To handle this, we use Robust Decision Making methods to simulate plausible outcomes for various strategies and evaluate those outcomes using different weights on the multi-attribute utility function. The simulation is done with a compartmental epidemiological model combined with a simple economic model and a model of liberty costs. Rather than trying to optimize likely outcomes for a particular version of the utility function, we find which strategies are robust across a wide range of plausible scenarios even when there is disagreement about how to weigh the competing values of life, liberty, and economy.

The political economy of COVID-19.

We assess the economic and health costs of COVID and policy responses to COVID. Based on initial estimates of health and economic costs, social distancing policies were justified, but these estimates now seem too high because of learning by doing. Significant differences in mortality rates across US states and countries can be explained by population density, climate, exposure, and policy. Regions that were able to contain the disease early have seen fewer deaths and lower economic losses. Some developing countries initially imposed drastic, costly measures, perhaps motivated by political economy. We also find that there has been underinvestment in prevention and mitigation that could have reduced the cost of adaptation and suggest that there is a lesson for climate change policies.

Combatting Covid-19. Or, "All Persons Are Equal but Some Persons Are More Equal than Others?"

Vaccines, when available, will prove to be crucial in the fight against Covid-19. All societies will face acute dilemmas in allocating scarce lifesaving resources in the form of vaccines for Covid-19. The author proposes The Value of Lives Principle as a just and workable plan for equitable and efficient access. After describing what the principle entails, the author contrasts the advantage of this approach with other current proposals such as the Fair Priority Model.