Competition and Well-Being

Jordi Brandts, Arno Riedl and Frans van Winden ()

No 1769, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper experimentally studies the effects of competition in an environment where people's actions can not be contractually fixed. We find that, in comparison with no competition, the presence of competition does neither increase efficiency nor does it yield any gains in earnings for the short side of the exchange relation. Moreover, competition has a clearly negative impact on the disposition towards others and on the experienced well-being of those on the long side. Since subjective well-being improves only for those on the short side competition contributes to larger inequalities in experienced well-being. All in all competition does not show up as a positive force in our environment.

Keywords: happiness; well-being; laboratory experiment; emotions; market interaction; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C92 D30 J50 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2005-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-exp, nep-mic and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published as "Competitive Rivalry, Social Disposition, and Subjective Well-Being: An Experiment" in: Journal of Public Economics, 2009, 93 (11-12), 1158-1167

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https://docs.iza.org/dp1769.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Competition and Well-Being (2015)
Working Paper: Competition and Well-Being (2006)
Working Paper: Competition and well-being (2005)
Working Paper: Competition and Well-Being (2004)
Working Paper: Competition and Well-Being (2004)
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