Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment

Ifcher, John; Zarghamee, Homa

doi:10.1257/aer.101.7.3109

Cited by 265 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…They also compare average life-satisfaction levels of unemployed at different stages around retirement to support their findings. In the same line, Ifcher and Zarghamee (2011) investigate if happiness matters for time preferences by using happiness as one of the controls in an OLS regression framework.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the evidence for cardinal treatment of ordinal variables

Schröder

Yitzhaki

2017

European Economic Review

101

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research at DIW BerlinThis series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.The decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly.Any opinions expressed in this series are those of the author(s) and not those of DIW Berlin.Research disseminated by DIW Berlin may include views on public policy issues, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The most common practice-comparing well-being by means of descriptive analysis or linear regressions-ignores that the underlying collected well-being information is ordinal. If the well-being function is ordinal, then monotonic transformations are allowed. We demonstrate that treating ordinal data by methods intended to be used for cardinal data may give an incorrect impression of a robust result. Particularly, we derive the conditions under which the use of cardinal method to an ordinal variable gives an illusionary sense of robustness, while in fact one can reverse the conclusion reached by using an alternative cardinal assumption. The paper provides empirical applications.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the evidence for cardinal treatment of ordinal variables

Schröder

Yitzhaki

2017

European Economic Review

101

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“…Therefore we choose a procedure that is as simple as possible but allows to distinct between subjects that behave time consistent and subjects that are time inconsistent (see Harrison et al, 2002;Ifcher and Zarghamee, 2011;Meier and Sprenger, 2012). In a choice-based task, participants had to decide between a tax refund T that is obtained earlier and a refund T(1+i) that is obtained later in time.…”

Section: Time Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time Inconsistent Preferences and the Annuitization Decision

Schreiber

Weber

2013

SSRN Journal

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Good news can involve difficult decisions. For example winning a lottery jackpot can go along with the decision, whether to have the jackpot paid out immediately as a lump sum or as periodic annual payments. Also when entering retirement most people face the decision whether they want their defined contribution account balance paid as a lump sum or to annuitize that amount. The fact that people tend to choose the lump sum even if economic reasons suggest that they should choose the annuity is called the annuity paradox. In a large online survey we find that people behave time inconsistent: older people have a stronger tendency to choose the lump sum than younger people when they are asked to predict today what to choose when they retire. This effect is considerably stronger for participants that answer simple time preference questions inconsistently. Our findings suggest to think about precommitment devices for the annuitization decision.

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“…6 The background to our project is that there is a large literature on productivity at the personal and plant level ðe.g., Caves 1974;Lazear 1981;Ichniowski and Shaw 1999;Siebert and Zubanov 2010;Segal 2012Þ. There is a growing one on the measurement of human well-being ðe.g., Easterlin 2003;Van Praag and Ferrer-I-Carbonell 2004;Layard 2005;Ifcher and Zarghamee 2011;and Benjamin et al 2012Þ. Yet economists and management scientists still know relatively little about the causal linkages between these two variables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Happiness and Productivity

Oswald

Proto²,

Sgroi

2015

Journal of Labor Economics

741

509

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Some firms say they care about the well-being and "happiness" of their employees. But are such claims hype or scientific good sense? We provide evidence, for a classic piece rate setting, that happiness makes people more productive. In three different styles of experiment, randomly selected individuals are made happier. The treated individuals have approximately 12% greater productivity. A fourth experiment studies major real-world shocks ðbereavement and family illnessÞ. Lower happiness is systematically associated with lower productivity. These different forms of evidence, with complementary strengths and weaknesses, are consistent with the existence of a causal link between human well-being and human performance.

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Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment

Cited by 265 publications

References 72 publications

Revisiting the evidence for cardinal treatment of ordinal variables

Revisiting the evidence for cardinal treatment of ordinal variables

Time Inconsistent Preferences and the Annuitization Decision

Happiness and Productivity

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