Fear Assessment : Cost - Benefit Analysis and the Pricing of Fear and Anxiety

Death, illness, and injury are welfare-setbacks. So, too, is the fear of death, illness, and injury., Yet at the level of regulatory practice, a striking asymmetry between the physical and psychological constituents of welfare has emerged. Cost-benefit analysis by the EPA, NHTSA, FDA, OSHA, and other environmental, health, and safety agencies typically includes a quantitative "risk assessment," where measures to reduce physical harm are under consideration. 2 The deaths, illnesses, and injuries avoided by the various interventions that the agency might undertake are enumerated and then, often, priced in dollar terms.3 But these agencies almost never engage in fear assessment (to coin a term). They almost never enumerate and price the distressing mental states, such as fear, anxiety, worry, panic, or dread, that are causally connected to environmental, occupational, and consumer hazards and would (or at least might) be reduced by more stringent regulation.4 In this Article, I argue against the