The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z)

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first author more often than Professor Z, will have published more articles and experienced afaster growth rate over the course of her career as a result of reputation and visibility. Moreover, authors know that name ordering matters and indeed take ordering seriously: Several characteristics of an author group composition determine the decision to deviate from the default alphabetic name order to a significant extent.performance measurement, incentives, economists, name ordering

The Connexion Between Old and New Approaches to Financial Satisfaction

In this paper we compare the new satisfaction evaluation approach, developed in the nineties by Oswald, Clark, Blanchflower and others with the older income evaluation (IEQ) approach, developed by Van Praag and Kapteyn in the seventies of the previous century. We find that both approaches yield strikingly similar results with respect to financial satisfaction. The IEQ-approach yields additional insights, but it is not well applicable to other life domains than finance. It is argued that the usual Probit specification implies a specific cardinalization and, consequently, is less ordinal than usually thought. It is shown that the Probit-approach may be replaced by three other equivalent specifications that have some computational and intuitive advantages.financial satisfaction, income evaluation, Probit-models, cardinal utility

Climate equivalence scales and the effects of climate change on Russian welfare and well-being

This paper measures the concepts of welfare and well-being in Russia on the basis of two large Russian household surveys, carried out in 1993 and 1994. Welfare refers to satisfaction with income and well-being refers to satisfaction with life as a whole. This paper investigates how climate conditions in various parts of Russia affect the cost of living and well-being. Climate equivalence scales have been constructed for both welfare and well-being.Climate, Welfare, Well being, Climatic condition, Empirical method, Climate modification, Russia, Eurasia

The Mix Between Pay-as-you-go and Funded Pensions and What Demography Has to Do with it

A model is presented that explains the mix between funded and unfunded pension systems. It turns out that total pension and the relative shares of the two systems may be explained and are determined by the population growth rate, technological growth, the time-preference discount rate, that relative risk aversion, the production function, and the political representation of the old. A fall in the population growth rate, even to negative values, will imply a reduction of the interest rate and an increase in the capital-output ratio. Whether the pension system will shift to more or less funding depends on the political weight of the elderly. If the elderly succeed in getting more weight in the political process if their population share increases, which is likely when the population shrinks, the accent on the PAYG- system will increase. A fall in the population growth rate will result in a reduction of average welfare. This reduction is more severe, the larger the political power of the elderly.old-age pensions, pay-as-you-go, intergenerational transfers, retirement benefits

Using Happiness Surveys to Value Intangibles: The Case of Airport Noise

Inhabitants of houses near Amsterdam Airport are complaining of noise nuisance, caused by aircraft traffic. The usual assumption is that the effect of the externality will be perfectly reflected by house price differentials. This is based on the implicit assumption that there is a well-functioning housing market. If that is not true, we need a correction method in order to assess the intangible damage. We assess the monetary value of the noise damage, caused by aircraft noise nuisance around Amsterdam Airport as the sum of hedonic price differentials and a residual cost component. The residual costs are assessed from a survey, including an ordinal life satisfaction scale, on which individual respondents have scored. The derived compensation scheme depends on, among other things, the objective noise level, income, the degree to which prices account for noise differences, and the presence of noise insulation.cost-benefit analysis, externalities, airport noise, satisfaction analysis, residual shadow costs

Risk Aversion and the Subjective Time Discount Rate: A Joint Approach

In this paper we analyze a large sample of individual responses to six lottery questions. We derive a simultaneous estimate of risk aversion and the time preference discount rate per individual. This can be done because the consumption of a large prize is smoothed over a larger time period. It is found that both parameters strongly vary over individuals, while they are moderately negatively correlated. Furthermore we explain the estimated relative risk aversion and time preference by income, age, gender, entrepreneurship and an obesity index. Very significant effects are found. If we explain relative risk aversion in a simple model where time discounting is ignored, we find completely different estimates for this parameter. We conclude that in the case of lotteries with big prizes a simultaneous estimate of risk aversion and time preference is needed in order to avoid misspecificationexpected utility, risk aversion, time preference, lotteries, hypothetical questions

Perspectives from the Happiness Literature and the Role of New Instruments for Policy Analysis

After having been ignored for a long time by economists, happiness is becoming an object of serious research in 21st century economics. In Section 2 we sketch the present status of happiness economics. In Section 3 we consider the practical applicability of happiness economics, retaining the assumption of ordinal individual utilities. In Section 4 we introduce a cardinal utility concept, which seems to us the natural consequence of the happiness economics methodology. In Section 5 we sketch how this approach can lead to a normative approach to policy problems that is admissible from a positivist point of view. Section 6 concludes.happiness economics, subjective well-being, equivalence scales, economic policy

Well-being Inequality and Reference Groups - An Agenda for New Research

It is argued that the concept of well –being inequality cannot be properly defined without taking the referencing process into account. The reference effect depends on how frequently individuals compare with others and on the degree of social transparency in society. In this paper we employ the reference- extended model for incorporating the concept of happiness inequality in happiness studies.We plead for an extension of the present happiness paradigm by setting up a new additional agenda for empirical research in order to get quantified knowledge about the referencing process.subjective well being, happiness, inequality, reference group

An Almost Integration-free Approach to Ordered Response Models

In this paper we propose an alternative approach to the estimation of ordered response models. We show that the Probit-method may be replaced by a simple OLS-approach, called P(robit)OLS, without any loss of efficiency. This method can be generalized to the analysis of panel data. For large-scale examples with random fixed effects we found that computing time was reduced from 90 minutes to less than one minute. Conceptually, the method removes the gap between traditional multivariate models and discrete variable modelsCategorical data; Ordered probit model; Ordered response models; Subjective data; Subjective well-being