Reported Subjective Well-Being: A Challenge for Economic Theory and Economic Policy

By Alois Stutzer, Bruno S. Frey. Journal of Contextual Economics – Schmollers Jahrbuch, 2003

125 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Over the past few years, there has been a steadily increasing interest from economists in happiness research. This paper argues that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and endeavors to provide an impression of this new, and challenging, development. We study data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to understand (i) the role of aspirations in the relationship between income and happiness better and (ii) the effect of unemployment on people’s satisfaction with life. We discuss some of the consequences for economic policy and for economic theory.

Subfields: General Decision Sciences, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f3a54df6dfe9fac89cda76e0e6a6952b62542c27

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Citations in the corpus

Subjective Well-Being: Measuring Happiness, Suffering, and Other Dimensions of Experience (2014, background): “Longitudinal research (e.g., Lucas et al., 2003; Stutzer and Frey, 2004) indicates that people experiencing important life events such as marriage or childbirth may react more strongly as measured by one construct compared to another, and over time the different measures show differential patterns o”
Stress that Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox (2008, unknown): “Germany can be found in Stutzer and Frey (2004) .”
Valuation Techniques for Social Cost-Benefit Analysis: (2011, background): “…are able to recognise and predict the satisfaction of others, suggesting that SWB is observable and comparable between individuals. van Praag (1991) and Stutzer and Frey (2003) show that different individuals easily translate verbal labels, e.g. very good, into roughly the same numerical values.”
Does Marriage Make People Happy, or Do Happy People Get Married? (2006, background): “If the singles who have not married before the age of 30 report their subjective well-being, those who will marry report, on average, roughly equal satisfaction scores to those who will not marry.”