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The Lulling Effect: The Impact Of Child-Resistant Packaging On Aspirin And Analgesic Ingestions, W. Kip Viscusi Jan 1984

The Lulling Effect: The Impact Of Child-Resistant Packaging On Aspirin And Analgesic Ingestions, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In 1972, the Food and Drug Administration imposed a protective bottle cap requirement on aspirin and other selected drugs. This regulation epitomizes the technological approach to social regulation. The strategy for reducing children's poisoning risks was to design caps that would make opening containers of hazardous substances more difficult. This engineering approach will be effective provided that children's exposure to hazardous products does not increase. If, however, parents leave protective caps off bottles because they are difficult to open, or increase children's access to these bottles because they are supposedly "child proof," the regulation may not have a beneficial effect. …


Adaptive Responses To Chemical Labeling: Are Workers Bayesian Decision Makers?, W. Kip Viscusi, Charles J. O'Conner Jan 1984

Adaptive Responses To Chemical Labeling: Are Workers Bayesian Decision Makers?, W. Kip Viscusi, Charles J. O'Conner

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A fundamental issue in the economics of uncertainty is how individuals process information and make choices under uncertainty. In a recent analysis of the findings on risk perception, Kenneth Arrow (1982) concluded that the evidence regarding individual rationality was, at best, quite mixed. A prominent example of apparent irrationality of actual consumer behavior is that consumers, who presumably are risk averse, have failed to purchase heavily subsidized federal flood insurance. In the case of the market for hazardous jobs, which is the focus of this study, Viscusi (1979) found that workers' risk perceptions were positively correlated with the industry risk …