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作者：Beshears, John; Choi, James J.; Laibson, David; Madrian, Brigitte C.
作者单位：Harvard University; Yale University; Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Revealed preferences are tastes that rationalize an economic agent's observed actions. Normative preferences represent the agent's actual interests. It sometimes makes sense to assume that revealed preferences are identical to normative preferences. But there are many cases where this assumption is violated. We identify five factors that increase the likelihood of a disparity between revealed preferences and normative preferences: passive choice, complexity, limited personal experience, third-...
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作者：Diamond, Peter
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
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作者：Layard, Richard
摘要：The findings of behavioural economics and happiness research pose serious challenges for public policy analysis. Key findings relate to externality (people's happiness depends on what others have) mistakes (which arise from ignorance or misforecasting of happiness), and tastes (which are not exogenous but affected by public policy). In this special issue the author discusses how to modify the traditional framework to allow for these uncomfortable facts, and how to exploit our new knowledge abo...
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作者：Bowles, Samuel; Hwang, Sung-Ha
作者单位：The Santa Fe Institute; University of Siena; University of Massachusetts System; University of Massachusetts Amherst
摘要：Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investig...
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作者：Krueger, Alan B.; Schkade, David A.
作者单位：Princeton University; University of California System; University of California San Diego
摘要：This paper studies the test-retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method. The sample consists of 229 women who were interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005. The correlation of net affect (i.e., duration-weighted positive feelings less negative feelings) measured two weeks apart is .64, which is slightly higher than the correlation of life satisfaction (r = .59). Correlations between income, net a...
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作者：Koszegi, Botond; Rabin, Matthew
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：This article explores some conceptual issues in the study of well-being using the traditional economic approach of inferring preferences solely from choice behavior. We argue that choice behavior alone can never reveal which situations make people better off, even with unlimited data and under the maintained hypothesis of 100% rational choice. Ancillary assumptions or additional forms of data such as happiness measures are always needed. With such ancillary assumptions and additional data, how...
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作者：Loewenstein, George; Ubel, Peter A.
作者单位：Carnegie Mellon University; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：Many economists are becoming supportive of 'soft' paternalistic interventions that help people to avoid common decision errors without curtailing individual autonomy. To identify when such interventions could be beneficial, and to assess their success, requires a welfare criterion. However, traditional preference or choice-based criteria cannot serve this function because they assume that whatever people choose makes them better off. An alternative criterion that bases welfare on happiness rat...
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作者：Layard, R.; Nickell, S.; Mayraz, G.
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of Oxford
摘要：In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) measurement of inequality. We estimate this parameter using four large cross-sectional surveys of subjective happiness and two panel surveys. Altogether, the data cover over 50 countries and time periods between 1972 and 2005. In each of the six very different surveys, using a nu...
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作者：Frank, Robert H.
作者单位：Cornell University
摘要：A nice suit is one that compares favorably with those worn by others in the same local environment. More generally, a positional good is one whose utility depends strongly on how it compares with others in the same category. A positional externality occurs when new purchases alter the relevant context within which an existing positional good is evaluated. For example, if some job candidates begin wearing expensive custom-tailored suits, a side effect of their action is that other candidates be...
