CBA Community of Practice – Valuing Risks to Life and Limb

The Economic Society of Australia (NSW Branch) in conjunction with NSW Department of Industry invites you to participate in the second cost benefit analysis (CBA) community of practice.

Broadly, the goal of the CBA Community of Practice will be to provide a forum for practitioners to meet and discuss common issues in preparing CBAs for government investment and policy.

Our next Community of Practice  meeting will be held on 26 August from 12 noon to 1:30pm.

The topic for this meeting will be how we value risks of fatalities and injuries and how we use these in CBA.
There will be a short presentation but a focus on this meeting will be discussion among the group.
Participants will be encouraged to do some pre-reading and contribute thoughts on some discussion questions such as:

• Issues in measurement
  • What are some of the issues in valuing risks to life and limb?
  • Do the values used adequately capture the societal costs? What about impacts to friends and family? Altruistic values? benefits of ‘peace of mind’?
  • Are there circumstances when we should use the human capital approach?
• Issues in application
  • Should values vary by type of risk? e.g. should different values be placed on risks we fear more or have a higher likelihood?
  • How should value of risks vary by other factors. e.g. Age, location
  • How should we account for changes over time?

  • Should we focus on CBA or cost-effectiveness of safety

• Should we consider regulation to encourage the private sector to adopt such values to manage risk?

To that end we will recommend some pre-reading. A useful start are the following:

A 10 pager from the US Department of Transport – A very good technical summary of the literature and some of the issues

Section 3 of a less technical paper focused on application to road crashes by Richard Tooth

Places for the Community of Practice events  are limited. To book a seat please register below.

Attendance is free and a light lunch will be provided, however, it is essential that if you register that you attend or cancel your registration at least 24 hours prior to the event.

The intention is that there will meetings held at least quarterly.