TY - RPRT T1 - Accounting for adaptation in the economics of happiness Y1 - 2015 A1 - Miles S Kimball A1 - Ryan D. Nunn A1 - Daniel S. Silverman KW - Expectations KW - Health Conditions and Status KW - Methodology AB - Reported happiness provides a potentially useful way to evaluate unpriced goods and events; but measures of subjective well-being (SWB) often revert to the mean after responding to events, and this hedonic adaptation creates challenges for interpretation. Previous work tends to estimate time-invariant effects of events on happiness. In the presence of hedonic adaptation, this restriction can lead to biases, especially when comparing events to which people adapt at different rates. Our paper provides a flexible, extensible econometric framework that accommodates adaptation and permits the comparison of happiness-relevant life events with dissimilar hedonic adaptation paths. We present a method that is robust to individual fixed effects, imprecisely-dated data, and permanent consequences. The method is used to analyze a variety of events in the Health and Retirement Study panel. Many of the variables studied have substantial consequences for subjective well-being--consequences that differ greatly in their time profiles. UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w21365.pdf U4 - Methodology/Well-Being/hedonic well-being/subjective well-being/Happiness ER - TY - THES T1 - Three Essays on Estimation with Unpriced Amenities Y1 - 2012 A1 - Ryan D. Nunn A1 - Daniel S. Silverman KW - Employment and Labor Force KW - Methodology KW - Public Policy AB - Variation in the quality of job matches is an important determinant of workers' search decisions and the distribution of wages. I develop a structural search model that allows job match quality to depend on unpriced job amenities as well as monetary productivity, permitting match quality estimation that is robust to both unobserved amenities and selection. I estimate the model with wage and tenure data from the 1979 NLSY, finding that the standard deviation of job amenities is nearly as large as that of monetary productivity. I then use the model to investigate the welfare consequences of wage taxation and unemployment insurance. Traditional estimates of deadweight loss from wage taxation are increasingly overstated as job amenity dispersion rises. Reported happiness provides a new way to evaluate unpriced goods and experiences. In the wake of important life events, measures of subjective well-being often exhibit considerable mean reversion, which has not been fully incorporated into the economic analysis of happiness. This can lead to bias when comparing events. In the second chapter, Miles Kimball, Daniel Silverman, and I provide a flexible, extensible econometric framework that accommodates adaptation and permits the comparison of happiness-relevant life events with dissimilar hedonic adaptation paths. The method is used to analyze a variety of events in the Health and Retirement Study panel. The costly, endogenous supply of job amenities by firms has a number of interesting implications for labor markets and public policy. In the third chapter, Brendan Epstein and I show that it is necessary to estimate the heterogeneity and parameters of amenity supply in order to correctly infer deadweight loss from taxation. Deadweight loss is generally overestimated in work that omits explicit consideration of amenities, and this overestimation is proportional to the quantitative significance of heterogeneity in amenities across job matches. The endogenous supply of amenities, rather than exogenous endowment, is shown to exacerbate this overestimation. Examination of a static, non-search economy reveals that this is not just an artifact of search. Finally, we examine the dynamic response of taxable income and social welfare to unexpected tax changes. PB - University of Michigan CY - Ann Arbor VL - Ph.D. UR - http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/1286758781?accountid=14667http://mgetit.lib.umich.edu/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/Dissertations+%26+Theses+%40+CIC+Institutions&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dis N1 - Copyright - Copyright ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing 2012 Last updated - 2013-05-02 First page - n/a U4 - taxation JO - Three Essays on Estimation with Unpriced Amenities ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Risk Preferences in the PSID: Individual Imputations and Family Covariation. JF - Am Econ Rev Y1 - 2009 A1 - Miles S Kimball A1 - Claudia R Sahm A1 - Matthew D. Shapiro PB - 99 VL - 99 IS - 2 U1 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21132079?dopt=Abstract U2 - PMC2995549 U4 - Economic theory/Preferences ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Imputing Risk Tolerance From Survey Responses. JF - J Am Stat Assoc Y1 - 2008 A1 - Miles S Kimball A1 - Claudia R Sahm A1 - Matthew D. Shapiro AB -

Economic theory assigns a central role to risk preferences. This article develops a measure of relative risk tolerance using responses to hypothetical income gambles in the Health and Retirement Study. In contrast to most survey measures that produce an ordinal metric, this article shows how to construct a cardinal proxy for the risk tolerance of each survey respondent. The article also shows how to account for measurement error in estimating this proxy and how to obtain consistent regression estimates despite the measurement error. The risk tolerance proxy is shown to explain differences in asset allocation across households.

PB - 103 VL - 103 IS - 483 U1 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20407599?dopt=Abstract U2 - PMC2856097 U4 - Risk Behavior/Measurement ER - TY - RPRT T1 - Health Insurance and Labor Supply: Evidence from Hypothetical Shocks to Wealth Y1 - 2002 A1 - Matthew D. Shapiro A1 - Miles S Kimball KW - Employment and Labor Force KW - Health Conditions and Status KW - Medicare/Medicaid/Health Insurance KW - Net Worth and Assets PB - Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan U4 - Health Insurance/Health Shocks/Labor Supply/Wealth ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Preference Parameters and Behavioral Heterogeneity: An Experimental Approach in the HRS JF - Quarterly Journal of Economics Y1 - 1997 A1 - Barsky, Robert A1 - Miles S Kimball A1 - Juster, F. Thomas A1 - Matthew D. Shapiro KW - End of life decisions KW - Health Conditions and Status KW - Retirement Planning and Satisfaction AB - This paper reports measures of preference parameters relating to risk tolerance, time preference, and intertemporal substitution. These measures are based on survey responses to hypothetical situations constructed using an economic theorist's concept of the underlying parameters. The individual measures of preference parameters display heterogeneity. Estimated risk tolerance and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution are essentially uncorrelated across individuals. Measured risk tolerance is positively related to risky behaviors, including smoking, drinking, failing to have insurance, and holding stocks rather than Treasury bills. These relationships are both statistically and quantitatively significant, although measured risk tolerance explains only a small fraction of the variation of the studied behaviors. PB - 112 VL - 112 UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5193188_Preference_Parameters_and_Behavioral_Heterogeneity_An_Experimental_Approach_in_the_Health_and_Retirement_Survey IS - May U4 - Criteria for Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty/Health Production--Nutrition, Mortality, Morbidity, Disability, and Economic Behavior/Retirement/Retirement Policies/Health/Retirement/Smoking ER - TY - RPRT T1 - Estimating a Cardinal Attribute from Ordered Categorical Responses Subject to Noise Y1 - 1996 A1 - Miles S Kimball A1 - Matthew D. Shapiro KW - Methodology KW - Risk Taking AB - Estimating a Cardinal Attribute from Ordered Categorical Responses Subject to Noise This paper presents an estimate of the distribution of relative risk tolerance---a preference parameter quantifying individuals' behavior toward risk. The estimate is based on a new survey question about gambles over lifetime income. The preference parameter is treated as a latent variable subject to error; responses to the survey are modeled as depending on whether this latent variable falls within certain bounds. In contrast to the standard discrete choice model, the latent variable and the bounds have a cardinal interpretation. Moreover, for a subset of survey respondents, the survey questions are answered twice. This structure allows identification of the mean and variance of the preference parameter and the variance of the noise. UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2675727_Estimating_a_Cardinal_Attribute_from_Ordered_Categorical_Responses_Subject_to_Noise U4 - Methodology/Latent variables/Cardinal probit/Risk aversion and risk tolerance/Preference parameters/Survey methods ER -