When experienced and decision utility concur: The case of income comparisons

Andrew Clark, Claudia Senik () and Katsunori Yamada

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2017, vol. 70, issue C, 1-9

Abstract: While there is now something of a consensus in the economics of happiness literature that income comparisons to others help determine subjective well-being, debate continues over the relative importance of own and reference-group income, in particular in research on the Easterlin paradox. The variety of results in this domain have produced some scepticism regarding happiness analysis, and in particular with respect to the measurement of reference-group income. We here use data from an original Internet survey in Japan to compare the relative-income results from happiness regressions to those from hypothetical-choice experiments. This kind of validation of experienced utility via direct comparison with decision utility remains rare in this literature.

Keywords: Satisfaction; Income comparisons; Reference-group income; Discrete-choice experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 D63 I3 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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Related works:
Working Paper: When experienced and decision utility concur: The case of income comparisons (2017)
Working Paper: When experienced and decision utility concur: The case of income comparisons (2017)
Working Paper: When Experienced and Decision Utility Concur: The Case of Income Comparisons (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:70:y:2017:i:c:p:1-9

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2017.07.002

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