Compensating differentials and evolution in the quality-of-life among U.S. states

Gabriel, Stuart A.; Mattey, Joe P.; Wascher, William

doi:10.1016/s0166-0462(02)00007-8

Cited by 107 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Their data allow them to control for a variety of personal characteristics, and therefore address composition effects. The overall argument in Oswald and Wu (2010) is that well-being, conditional on individual characteristics including income category, is correlated with measures of local amenities (measuring non-income aspects of quality-of-life) extracted separately from a compensating-differentials approach, in earlier work by Gabriel et al (2003). This correlation is seen as independent validation of the well-being measures.…”

Section: Composition Effects and Welfarementioning

confidence: 98%

Regional Growth and Regional Decline

Breinlich

Ottaviano

Temple

2014

Handbook of Economic Growth

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Since the early 1990s, there has been a renaissance in the study of regional growth, spurred by new models, methods and data. We survey a range of modelling traditions, and some formal approaches to the 'hard problem' of regional economics, namely the joint consideration of agglomeration and growth. We also review empirical methods and findings based on natural experiments, spatial discontinuity designs, and structural models. Throughout, we give considerable attention to regional growth in developing countries. Finally, we highlight the potential importance of processes that are specific to regional decline, and which deserve greater research attention.

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Section: Composition Effects and Welfarementioning

confidence: 98%

Regional Growth and Regional Decline

Breinlich

Ottaviano

Temple

2014

Handbook of Economic Growth

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“…In particular, Oswald and Wu (2009) correlate reported happiness of one million US individuals with an objective measure of regional quality of life (Gabriel 2003) and find a very strong correlation between the two.…”

Section: Happiness Individual Preferences and Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Happiness economics

Ferrer-i-Carbonell

2012

SERIEs

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There is enough evidence to be confident that individuals are able and willing to provide a meaningful answer when asked to value on a finite scale their satisfaction with their own lives, a question that psychologists have long and often posed to respondents of large questionnaires. Without taking its limitations and criticisms too lightly, some economists have been using this measure of self-reported satisfaction as a proxy for utility so as to contribute to a better understanding of individuals' tastes and hopefully behavior. By means of satisfaction questions we can elicit information on individual likes and dislikes over a large set of relevant issues, such as income, working status and job amenities, the risk of becoming unemployed, inflation, and health status. This information can be used to evaluate existing ideas from a new perspective, understand individual behavior, evaluate and design public policies, study poverty and inequality, and develop a preference based valuation method. In this article I first critically assess the pros and cons of using satisfaction variables, and then discuss its main applications.

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“…A further problem concerns how one should account for non-housing prices in this method. Should non-housing price differentials be treated as resulting from amenities as in Gabriel et al (2003)? What if some of the differential in nonhousing prices is due to things other than amenities, such as geographical remoteness?…”

Section: Empirical Framework and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Computing real wages requires estimating cost of living differences across areas, and doing so is one of the biggest challenges faced by quality of life researchers. Differences in the cost of living across areas are mostly attributable to differences in the cost of housing (Beeson and Eberts 1989), but are also at least partially attributable to differences in the prices of non-housing goods (Gabriel, Mattey, and Wascher 2003). There are two main issues in computing cost of living differences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values

Winters

2013

Ann Reg Sci

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Implicit values of amenities and the quality of life in an area can be measured by differences in "real wages" across areas, where real wages are computed as nominal wages adjusted for the cost of living. Computing cost of living differences involves several important issues, most important being how housing prices should be measured. Previous researchers typically have used some combination of rental payments and homeowner housing values. This paper examines differences in quality of life estimates for U.S. metropolitan areas using, alternatively, rents and housing values. We find that the two measures of quality of life are highly correlated. Valuebased estimates, however, are considerably more dispersed than rent-based estimates, likely because of the recent bubble in the housing market and because housing values often provide an imperfect measure of the present user cost of housing. Researchers should be cautious in using housing values to construct quality of life estimates. JEL Classification: R13, R21, R23

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Compensating differentials and evolution in the quality-of-life among U.S. states

Cited by 107 publications

References 9 publications

Regional Growth and Regional Decline

Regional Growth and Regional Decline

Happiness economics

Differences in quality of life estimates using rents and home values

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