Talk by Dr. Ståle Navrud
Ståle Navrud is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Resource Management at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (http://www.umb.no/1176) and is one of Europe’s leading environmental economists. Ståle is visiting the IOM on Wednesday 19th September 2007, as part of the EC-funded HEIMTSA project, where he leads one of the work packages, on monetary valuation of health and illness. Ståle has offered to give a short presentation on results from a recent European multi-country study, to give new empirical evidence on people’s willingness-to-pay (WTP) to reduce the risks of mortality. This was carried out as part of the current EC-funded NEEDS project (New Energy Externalities for Sustainability - (http://www.needs-project.org/lubiana9.asp), in which IOM also participates. Whereas monetary valuation studies on mortality originally focused on willingness-to-pay to reduce the risks of death, increasingly the focus has been on WTP for an additional year of life. This change in emphasis recognises that “lives saved” are really deaths postponed. It is entirely consistent with the methodological work of IOM and others, on expressing the mortality risks of air pollution in terms of life years / life expectancy, rather than “attributable deaths” (see e.g. IOM TM/06/01 'Comparing estimated risks for air pollution with risks for other health effects' by Miller and Hurley).
Ståle’s talk will be at the usual time of 13.00hrs, in Seminar Room 2 of the Main IOM Building at Riccarton. If you are interested in attending the presentation, please contact Ken Dixon.