Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, and Disability

Bagenstos, Samuel R.; Schlanger, Margo

doi:10.2139/ssrn.928883

Cited by 21 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Posner and Sunstein (2005) discuss similar ideas. Some time after our initial 2005 working paper was written, we became aware of the interesting work, now published, of Bagenstos and Schlanger (2007). 15 Appropriate hedonic compensation for bereavement is studied in Oswald and Powdthavee (2008).…”

Section: Compensation and Disabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Does happiness adapt? A longitudinal study of disability with implications for economists and judges

Oswald

Powdthavee

2008

Journal of Public Economics

431

311

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper is an empirical study of partial hedonic adaptation. It provides longitudinal evidence that people who become disabled go on to exhibit considerable recovery in mental well-being. In fixed-effects equations we estimate the degree of hedonic adaptation at --depending on the severity of the disability --approximately 30% to 50%. Our calculations should be viewed as illustrative; more research, on other data sets, is needed. Nevertheless, we discuss potential implications of our results for economists and the courts.

show abstract

Section: Compensation and Disabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Does happiness adapt? A longitudinal study of disability with implications for economists and judges

Oswald

Powdthavee

2008

Journal of Public Economics

431

311

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Marks and Ireland (2007) have suggested that there are only six states in the USA in which a strong effort is made to put forth such claims. Distinct compensation for LEL as opposed to pain and suffering has its opponents (Bagenstos and Schlanger 2007;Bronstein et al 2008;Sunstein 2008) as well as its proponents (Ubel and Lowenstein 2008;Miller 2000;Swedloff and Huang 2010). This distinction, however, falls outside of the scope of this article, yet the contribution of role/identity loss as a contributor to suffering cannot be underestimated.…”

Section: Role/identity Loss and Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As has been discussed through much of this article, "suffering" involves more than depression and anxiety, and Noah fails to address the critical aspects of suffering that go beyond the realm of claims of success by the pharmaceutical industry, e.g., loss of identity, disintegration of the self, and suffering through involvement of imperfect medical and legal systems. Although there is a significant body of legal literature on "hedonic adaptation" following personal injury (e.g., Adler and Posner 2008;Bagenstos and Schlanger 2007;Bronstein et al 2008), supporters of reduced noneconomic damage awards cite psychological investigations of restoration of well-being, which is not necessarily analogous to amelioration of suffering.…”

Section: The Medical System and Its Contribution To Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whither Suffering? The Potential Impact of Tort Reform on the Emotional and Existential Healing of Traumatically Injured Chronic Pain Patients

Schatman

Sullivan

2010

Psychol. Inj. and Law

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Approximately half of the state legislatures in the USA have enacted tort reform, generally focused on reducing noneconomic damages such as those awarded for pain and suffering of traumatically injured parties. Traumatic injury has been empirically associated with the development of chronic pain, which in turn has been associated with the concept of human suffering. This analysis examines the meaning of suffering within the context of traumatically induced chronic pain, recognizing that this population is at heightened risk of experiencing long-term emotional as well as physical pain. Factors contributing to profound suffering include the potential development of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, role/identity loss, maltreatment by a medical system generally inept in its management of chronic pain, and the negative manner in which personal injury victims are often treated by the legal system. While the American medical system struggles to identify suffering, the legal system-through tort reform-has chosen to simply ignore it, demonstrating little concern for the integrity of the vulnerable chronic pain sufferer. In doing so, the "destructed" chronic painient is further "deconstructed". We argue that by limiting the size of settlements and jury awards, tort reform serves to potentially deny personal injury victims of a critical vehicle for finding meaning in their suffering, and accordingly limits their likelihood of achieving relief.

show abstract

“…Bagenstos and Schlanger (2006) make an argument that the existence of such adaptation largely nullifies the case for compensatory damages. The concept of adaptation has a long history, valuably summarized in Frederick and Loewenstein (1999) and Fujita and Diener (2005), and discussed conceptually in Menzel et al (2002), Rayo and Becker (2007), Ubel et al (2005), and Dolan and Kahneman (2007).…”

Section: Private Communication Dated May 2 2007 Anonymousmentioning

confidence: 99%

Death, Happiness, and the Calculation of Compensatory Damages

Oswald¹,

Powdthavee²

2010

Law and Happiness

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper studies the mental distress caused by bereavement. The largest emotional losses are from the death of a spouse; the second-worst in severity are the losses from the death of a child; the third-worst is the death of a parent. The paper explores how happiness regression equations might be used in tort cases to calculate compensatory damages for emotional harm and pain-and-suffering. We examine alternative well-being variables, discuss adaptation, consider the possibility that bereavement affects someone's marginal utility of income, and suggest a procedure for correcting for the endogeneity of income. Although the paper's contribution is methodological, and further research is needed, some illustrative compensation amounts are discussed. 2 Death, Happiness, and the Calculation of Compensatory Damages

show abstract

Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, and Disability

Cited by 21 publications

References 8 publications

Does happiness adapt? A longitudinal study of disability with implications for economists and judges

Does happiness adapt? A longitudinal study of disability with implications for economists and judges

Whither Suffering? The Potential Impact of Tort Reform on the Emotional and Existential Healing of Traumatically Injured Chronic Pain Patients

Death, Happiness, and the Calculation of Compensatory Damages

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About