Subjective wellbeing, mean reversion and risk

This thesis examines the possibility of directly measuring utility via reported subjective wellbeing and considers the structure of utility functions such measurements imply. Chapter one surveys the practical and theoretical arguments in favour of such an approach, and outlines the key technical difficulties associated with obtaining usable utility data from self-reported subjective wellbeing. Chapter two links subjective wellbeing to the model presented by Robson (2001) whereby restrictions on utility are predicted by evolutionary models. A specific model of mean reversion is then suggested, demonstrating the relationship between mean reversion and time preference, and data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is used to estimate the speed at which habituation occurs. Links between evolutionary models and the problem of mapping from reported subjective wellbeing to underlying utility are then used to generate a method for recovering cardinal utility data from ordinal subjective wellbeing using observed response frequency. This approach is then demonstrated using the BHPS data. Chapter three considers the aggregation of subjective wellbeing through time and introduces the concept of `peak aversion', a preference for smoothness in utility across states and through time, and relates it to traditional risk aversion measures and general state-dependent utility. The application of peak aversion to subjective wellbeing, Quality Adjusted Life Years (`QALYs'), tortious compensation and social choice theory are then considered. An empirical estimate of the strength of the preference is obtained using data on differences in Standard Gamble and Time Tradeoff QALYs and is used to calculate the curvature of the inequality averse social welfare function and appropriate QALY weightings based on severity of illness

Can brands make us happy? A research framework for the study of brands and their effects on happiness

Brands permeate consumer culture. Yet, despite their ubiquitous presence, one of the societally most relevant and fundamental questions of brand existence remains among the most difficult to capture: Can brands make us happy? Academics have identified emotional and cognitive influences of brands on loyalty and studied the broader well-being effects of income and consumption. This paper adds to this discourse by analyzing the roads and barriers of researching correlations between brands and happiness. We first evaluate methods to reliably assess general influences on happiness. Then, we differentiate three levels of the consumer-brand experience and discuss if and how their respective correlations with happiness can meaningfully be measured. As a result, we offer a roadmap for brand-related happiness research that directs and inspires further inquiry

How does happiness relate to economic behaviour?: a review of the literature

This article reviews research on the relationship between happiness (subjective wellbeing) and economic behaviour. I describe how experimental and non-experimental methods have been used, across the social sciences, to investigate how happiness drives, and is driven by, particular behavioural tendencies. I consider interpersonal behaviour (selfishness, trust and reciprocity) and individual behaviour (risk and time preferences). Regarding interpersonal behaviour, a general conclusion is that happiness results from pro-social behaviour. Happiness negatively correlates with selfishness and positively correlates with trust; in both cases there is stronger evidence that the behaviour is a cause of happiness than a consequence of it. Individuals also gain happiness from inflicting costly punishment on those who have harmed them, although being happy reduces the degree to which people are willing to dole out such punishment in the first place. Regarding individual behaviour, the relationship between happiness and risk preferences remains unclear despite a large body of research on the topic, while there is evidence that happiness affects time preferences by reducing impatience. In all cases, I draw distinctions between the long- and short- term relationships between happiness and behaviour

Fully rational morality and evaluation of public decisions : with action research case study : a local planning controversy and residents' appeal to a public inquiry and to national and international courts

The impetus for my deliberations arises from the need to establish which proposals and decisions by social institutions to approve. This seems to come down to much the same as considering which alternatives are the better in a moral sense, but, unfortunately, there is no general agreement as to which of numerous proposed moral systems is apt, and the long and tortuous history of ethics indicates very poor prospects for such agreement. If at the outset I had been more conversant with that and the argument that the notion of a 'right' or 'objective' morality is tautological, nonsensical and/or incoherent, I would probably have thought it ridiculously ambitious to seek the basis of morality and would probably not have embarked upon the theoretical parts of this thesis. However, occasionally something is gained by attempting the impossible, and, while I certainly do not claim to have found the (morally) right morality, I suggest that I come at least very near to establishing how to ascertain what rules for behaviour are fully rational.Whether fully rational rules (FRM) are the same as 'moral' ones is arguably essentially a semantic question. However, I suggest that our definition of 'moral' is doomed to be a minority quest of marginal significance in reasonably rational societies if it entails rules which are notably at variance with those which are the most likely to be adopted by reasonably rational people as the general expectation and/or requirement in a maximally rationally structured society (arguably a 'true' democracy).Evaluation is hardly fUlly rational unless it is practicable. I have therefore included an attempt to apply FRM to the complex real situation which my Walton Street 'action research' examines and which comprises a number of decisions of a type crucial to the working of modem societies (e.g. those of pressure groups, local authorities, the press, public inquiries and national and international Courts).My 'action research' concerns the insistence by the authorities that the poor housing in the Walton Street area in Hull must be dealt with by total clearance under the Housing Act 1957 rather than by the partial clearance and Housing Action Area treatment which was facilitated by the Housing Act 1974 and was overwhelmingly preferred by the residents. In their bid to change the authorities' plan the residents exhausted all means of appeal, and in view of the evidence regarding the quality of the houses and cost calculations submitted on behalf of the residents, it was accepted (e.g. by the Court of Appeal) that the residents' alternative was both feasible and cheaper in the short term (and there were no long term assessments). Nevertheless, neither local, nor central, government would accept that the residents' proposal constituted the most satisfactory method of dealing with the conditions - seemingly for rather dubious reasons

Assessing dam insfrastructure and happiness of rural dwellers : A case of Shiroro Hydro Electricity dam community in Nigeria

Since independence, Nigeria has adopted the central planning approach to development and structural transformation as a deliberate strategy to influence and control the principal sectors of the economy in order to achieve growth and development for the well-being of the citizenry. It was in this spirit that the Shiroro Hydro Electricity Dam was installed in Shiroro village within Niger State in 1990. However, important aspects like the happiness of the host community and the internal security of the installed dam and the likely repercussions such as vandalization of the dam by the host community has often been ignored. The idea behind this research work therefore, is to ascertain the impact of the Shiroro Hydro Electricity Dam on the happiness of the Shiroro community. In order to accomplish this research objective, the study analyzed the socio-economic variables of state of mind, household per capita income, physical environment and social amenities as yardsticks of generating happiness from the treatment and control groups. The study used the Propensity Score Matching technique and the Binary Probit Model to analyze the data. The result obtained indicates that the income level of the community has increased by 18 per cent. However, the community’s happiness status is found to be negative due largely to the loss of farmland, and environmental predicaments like flood and inadequate rural infrastructure amenities. Therefore, the study recommends that the government introduce a flood forecast structure of early warnings to minimize flood damage, introduce farm-education schemes to change the community’s perception of their proneness to local resources opportunities, and introduce a Rural Infrastructure Trust Fund to overcome the social amenity predicament in the community. It is concluded that these support schemes would not only serve as compensation to the dam- created negative externalities but also would go a long way at reducing violence and crime, hence improving the happiness of the host communit

An Inexpiable Debt: Stalinist Cinema, Biopolitics, and the Discourse of Happiness

© 2015 The Russian Review. This article excavates the coentanglement of happiness and duty in Stalinist discourse by examining Soviet films of the 1930s and 1940s, including Dziga Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin (1934) and Mikhail Kalatozov's Valerii Chkalov (1941). As happiness was brought firmly into the political domain in the 1930s, cinema celebrated Stalin's dictum that "life has become more joyful" at the same time it espoused dutiful service to the state. The merging of self-realization and self-sacrifice at the heart of this on-screen conception of "happiness," I argue, bore witness to a new biopolitical modality of power which legitimized citizens' right to a happy and prosperous life at the same time as it produced a "being-in-debt." With recourse to Jacques Lacan's theories on the synergy of discourse and jouissance, this article explores how the emergence of a new form of governmentality in the Stalin era was rooted in the configuration of a new libidinal economy