Reported Job Satisfaction : What Does It Mean?

By reporting his satisfaction with his job or any other experience, an individual does not communicate the number of utils that he feels. Instead, he expresses his posterior preference over available alternatives conditional on acquired knowledge of the past. This new interpretation of reported job satisfaction restores the power of microeconomic theory without denying the essential role of discrepancies between one’s situation and available opportunities. Posterior human wealth discrepancies are found to be the best predictor of reported job satisfaction. Static models of relative utility and other subjective well-being assumptions are all unambiguously rejected by the data, as well as an \"economic\" model in which job satisfaction is a measure of posterior human wealth. The \"posterior choice\" model readily explains why so many people usually report themselves as happy or satisfied, why both younger and older age groups are insensitive to current earning discrepancies, and why the past weighs more heavily than the present and the future.En rapportant sa satisfaction vis-à-vis son travail ou toute autre expérience, un individu ne communique pas le nombre d’unités d’utilité qu’il ressent. Plutôt, conditionnellement à ses expériences antérieures, il exprime a posteriori sa préférence relativement à d’autres emplois ou situations alternatives. Cette nouvelle interprétation de la satisfaction révélée rend à la théorie microéconomique son pouvoir explicatif tout en reconnaissant le rôle essentiel joué par la différence entre la situation d’une personne et les opportunités. Les différences a posteriori dans la richesse humaine sont les meilleurs prédicteurs de la satisfaction révélée. Les modèles statiques de l’utilité relative et ceux d’utilité subjective sont tous rejetés par les données, de même que le modèle économique où la satisfaction de l’emploi est une mesure de la richesse humaine a posteriori. Le modèle de choix a posteriori explique pourquoi, dans les enquêtes, une grande majorité de personnes expriment leur bonheur ou leur satisfaction, pourquoi les jeunes et les vieux ne réagissent pas aux différentielles de revenus courants et pourquoi le passé joue davantage que la situation présente ou future

Social Incentives in the Workplace

We present evidence on social incentives in the workplace, namely on whether workers\u27 behaviour is affected by the presence of those they are socially tied to, even in settings where there are no externalities among workers due to either the production technology or the compensation scheme in place. To do so, we combine data on individual worker productivity from a firm\u27s personnel records with information on each worker\u27s social network of friends in the firm. We find that compared to when she has no social ties with her co-workers, a given worker\u27s productivity is significantly higher when she works alongside friends who are more able than her, and significantly lower when she works with friends who are less able than her. As workers are paid piece rates based on individual productivity, social incentives can be quantified in monetary terms and are such that (i) workers who are more able than their friends are willing to exert less effort and forgo 10% of their earnings; (ii) workers who have at least one friend who is more able than themselves are willing to increase their effort and hence productivity by 10%. The distribution of worker ability is such that the net effect of social incentives on the firm\u27s aggregate performance is positive. The results suggest that firms can exploit social incentives as an alternative to monetary incentives to motivate workers

Investigating how the attributes of live theatre productions influence consumption choices using conjoint analysis : the example of the National Arts Festival, South Africa

While there is a fair amount of work on determinants of demand for the live performing arts, results have often been contradictory with little explanatory power. This may be because of the difficulty in describing the attributes of a performance, particularly in terms of its quality, and the heterogeneity of consumer preferences. This article uses conjoint analysis, also called choice experiments, to investigate the impact of the attributes of live theatre performances on demand, using data collected from 483 randomly chosen attenders at live theatre performances at the 2008 South African National Arts Festival. Attributes include the type of cast (professional, semi-professional or amateur), reputation of the producer/director, the context or setting, production type and ticket price of the show. Results largely support the a priori expectations based on the results of other demand studies. For example, it is found that the age of consumers affects the type of show chosen, that utility and willingness to pay increase for shows with professional and semi-professional casts and that 93% of the potential audience prefer shows with a South African context. It is concluded that the method could prove useful to both event organisers and policy makers, especially where the goal is to broaden access to the arts

The role of museums in bilateral tourist flows: Evidence from Italy

This paper estimates the causal relationship of supply of art on domestic tourist flows. To this aim, we use aggregate bilateral data on tourist flows and various data on museums in the twenty Italian regions. To solve the potential endogeneity of the supply of museums, we use three different empirical strategies: we use a fixed effects model controlling for bilateral macro-area dummies, we compute the degree of selection on unobservables relative to observables which would be necessary to drive the result to zero and, finally, we adopt a two-stage least squares approach that uses a measure of historical patronage, the number of noble families, as an instrument for the number of museums. For each empirical strategy, there is strong evidence of a positive effect of the number of ‘net-museums’ on bilateral tourist flows

Taxation and market power

"We analyze the incidence and welfare effects of unit sales taxes in experimental monopoly and Bertrand markets. We find, in line with economic theory, that firms with no market power are able to shift a high share of a tax burden on to consumers, independent of whether buyers are automated or human players. In monopoly markets, a monopolist bears a large share of the burden of a tax increase. With human buyers, however, this share is smaller than with automated buyers as the presence of human buyers constrains the pricing behavior of a monopolist." (author's abstract)"Dieser Artikel untersucht Inzidenz- und Wohlfahrtseffekte einer Mengensteuer in experimentellen Monopol- und Bertrand-Märkten. Im Einklang mit der ökonomischen Theorie sind Firmen ohne Marktmacht in der Lage, einen großen Anteil der Last einer Steuererhöhung an die Konsumenten weiterzugeben. Dies gilt unabhängig davon, ob die Käufer simuliert sind oder die Kaufentscheidungen durch reale Käufer getroffen werden. In Monopolmärkten trägt der Monopolist einen großen Anteil der Last einer Steuererhöhung. Werden die Kaufentscheidungen durch reale Käufer getroffen, ist dieser Anteil jedoch kleiner als mit simulierten Käufern, da reale Käufer im Experiment das Preissetzungsverhalten des Monopolisten einschränken." (Autorenreferat

Educational expenditure in France, Japan and the United kingdom : Lesdepences d'ensignement en rance, au Japan et au Royaume-Uni

334 p.; 24 cm

Le comportement bancaire, le diviseur de crédit et l'efficacité du contrôle monétaire

This paper seeks to introduce a profit-maximizing behaviour in commercial banking theory, at aggregate and microeconomic levels. Thus, it differs from present models of the french banking System, which are mainly descriptive, with simpliflying assumptions of unicity of interest rates and of lack of risk making it sufficient for banks to supply the demand for credit. It is also different from models which consider banking as pure management of multiple assets, for it emphasizes credit supply. The approach followed hère leads to reverse the credit multiplier info a divider, and to examine the case for aggregate credit rationing. It also produces means of analysing the efficiency of monetary control by the Central Bank.Cet article tente d'introduire le comportement de maximisation du profit par les banques commerciales dans la théorie monétaire, au niveau global comme au niveau microéconomique. Il diffère ainsi des représentations actuelles du système bancaire français, où le souci comptable masque le comportement, et où les hypothèses simplificatrices d'unicité des taux d'intérêt et d'absence de risque conduisent à remplacer la maximisation du profit par la satisfaction de la demande de crédit par les banques. Il diffère aussi des représentations qui assimilent l'activité bancaire à une gestion d'actifs multiples, et s'intéresse essentiellement à l'offre de crédits nouveaux. Cette optique conduit à définir un diviseur de crédit, en inversant la causalité du multiplicateur ; à étudier la possibilité d'un rationnement global du crédit. La méthodologie proposée fournit aussi un moyen d'analyser l'efficacité du contrôle des banques par les autorités monétaires.Lévy-Garboua Louis, Levy-Garboua Vivien. Le comportement bancaire, le diviseur de crédit et l'efficacité du contrôle monétaire. In: Revue économique, volume 23, n°2, 1972. pp. 243-282

L'analyse de surplus appliquée

On the applications of the surplus analysis According to Musgrave a modem state should strive towards three different goals : productive ressources allocation, income distribution and some macroeconomic results concerning growth, employment and inflation. But there are some short comings in the analysis and the author pledges in favour of a more comprehensive approach of the public economy and he purposes the use of the surplus analysis. Unfortunately the method, as it is a generally developped, leads only to some approximation of a social welfare and for the decision maker, such an approximation is useless. But it is possible to make several constraints of the models more explicit and then much better approximations of the resulting situation can be derived. The surplus analysis becomes, far form the purity of the mathematical model, doser to the calculus of errors in applied physics.D'après Musgrave, les fonctions économiques d'un Etat moderne sont orientées dans trois directions séparées : allocation des ressources productives, distribution des revenus et objectifs de politique économique majeurs : plein emploi, crois­sance et lutte contre l'inflation. Ici l'auteur propose d'unifier l'analyse et de recourir pour cela à l'analyse de surplus. Malheureusement celle-ci a, telle qu'elle est employée ordinairement, le défaut de conduire à des résultats très approximatifs en ce qui concerne la mesure d'un état donné de bien-être social. Mais il est possible, et c'est la contribution de l'auteur, de fixer dans une situation concrète beaucoup plus explicitement les limites de variations de certaines contraintes et de parvenir ainsi en fin de chaîne à des résultats plus précis et plus utilisables par le décideur. Perdant de sa pureté mathématique, l'analyse de surplus se rapproche du calcul des erreurs analogue à celui du physicien appliqué.Levy-Garboua Vivien. L'analyse de surplus appliquée. In: Revue économique, volume 26, n°6, 1975. pp. 987-1003