CREECA Lecture Series Podcast
Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
CREECA’s mission is to support research, teaching, and outreach on Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Central Asia. We approach this three-part mission by promoting faculty research across a range of disciplines; by supporting graduate and undergraduate teaching and training related to the region; and by serving as a community resource through outreach activities targeted to K-12 teachers and students, other institutions of higher education, and the general public.
As a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center, CREECA hosts a variety of events and lectures which are free and open to the public. You can find recordings of past events here.
As a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center, CREECA hosts a variety of events and lectures which are free and open to the public. You can find recordings of past events here.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Sep 13, 2017 • 42min
The Value of a Statistical Life in a Dictatorship — Paul Castañeda Dower (09.07.2017)
What is the value of a statistical life (VSL) in a dictatorship? We structurally estimate the trade-off between monetary costs and fatality risk in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s regime. Using regional variation in the level of political victims during the Great Terror, we estimate this VSL to be approximately $43,000, 6% of the VSL estimate of US in 1940 and 29% of the modern VSL estimate in India. These findings are the first explicit attempt to measure VSL in a dictatorship and are a novel contribution to the debate on autocracies versus democracies.
