11,291 research outputs found
A Happiness Approach to Cost-Benefit Analysis
Subjective well-being (SWB) surveys ask respondents to quantify their overall or momentary happiness or life-satisfaction, or pose similar questions about other aspects of respondents\u27 mental states. A large empirical literature in economics and psychology has grown up around such surveys. Increasingly, too, scholars have advanced the normative proposal that SWB surveys be used for policymaking—for example, by using survey results to calculate monetary equivalents for nonmarket goods (to be incorporated in cost-benefit analysis), or to calculate gross national happiness.
This Article skeptically evaluates the policy role of SWB data. It is critical to distinguish between (1) using SWB surveys as evidence of preference utility versus (2) using them as evidence of experience utility. Preference utility is a measure of the extent to which someone has realized her preferences; experience utility, a measure of the quality of someone\u27s mental states. The two are quite different because individuals can have preferences regarding non-mental occurrences.
Having drawn this distinction, the Article then argues, first, that SWB surveys are poor evidence of preference utility—given problems of preference and scale heterogeneity, as well as other difficulties. Stated-preference surveys are a much better survey format for eliciting preference utility. Second, in considering SWB surveys as an experience-utility measure, we should recognize that experientialism about well-being—the view that well-being is simply a matter of good experiences—is highly controversial. More plausibly, an experience-utility measure might be seen as an indicator of one aspect of well-being. However, even constructing this weak experience-utility measure is not straightforward—as the Article demonstrates by discussing Daniel Kahneman\u27s detailed proposal for such a metric
Projection Operator Formalisms and the Nuclear Shell Model
The shell model solve the nuclear many-body problem in a restricted model
space and takes into account the restricted nature of the space by using
effective interactions and operators. In this paper two different methods for
generating the effective interactions are considered. One is based on a partial
solution of the Schrodinger equation (Bloch-Horowitz or the Feshbach projection
formalism) and other on linear algebra (Lee-Suzuki). The two methods are
derived in a parallel manner so that the difference and similarities become
apparent. The connections with the renormalization group are also pointed out.Comment: 4 pages, no figure
The Shell Model, the Renormalization Group and the Two-Body Interaction
The no-core shell model and the effective interaction can
both be derived using the Lee-Suzuki projection operator formalism. The main
difference between the two is the choice of basis states that define the model
space. The effective interaction can also be derived using
the renormalization group. That renormalization group derivation can be
extended in a straight forward manner to also include the no-core shell model.
In the nuclear matter limit the no-core shell model effective interaction in
the two-body approximation reduces identically to . The same
considerations apply to the Bloch-Horowitz version of the shell model and the
renormalization group treatment of two-body scattering by Birse, McGovern and
Richardson
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