On the value of time and human life

François Gardes ()
Additional contact information
François Gardes: Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics & Western Catholic University, https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/francois-gardes

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: The opportunity cost of time is estimated using a model based on domestic production (depending on monetary and time expenditures) and direct utility (depending on produced commodities). These factors of domestic production are measured by the matching of a Family Budget survey with a Time Use survey. The new model is estimated on Canadian, French, Polish, US and Burkina-Faso statistics. It allows the economic value of human life to be estimated, based on the integration of the marginal value of each instant during an individual's life cycle. This value is shown to give a different pattern across countries compared to their per capita GDP. Finally, the opportunity cost of time is shown to vary between commodities according to the possibility of substituting money and time in domestic production. It also increases between countries relatively to the average wage rate, according to the degree of liberalization of the labor markets

Keywords: Opportunity cost of time; value of human life; elasticity of substitution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D91 J17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2021/21023.pdf (application/pdf)
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03325332

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:21023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucie Label ().