Economic Growth and the Relativity of Satisfaction

David de la Croix

No 1995023, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: We extent Ramsey’s model to be in accordance with the facts that self-reported satisfaction levels are almost unrelated to economic prosperity, both across countries and across time. We assume that things are judged by the extent to which they depart from collective norms. Norms are based on the past experience of all agents. A special case is when norms are build on the basis of the best previous experience. Agents do not internalize their own effect on collective norms and the competitive equilibrium is thus sub-optimal. An optimal solution could however be decentralized by a planner. The dynamics displays oscillations, slow adjustment speed or path dependency and substantial transitory effects of fiscal policy.

JEL-codes: O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18
Date: 1995-08-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:1995023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Virginie LEBLANC ().