More Weekend reading.
Abstract
This paper proposes foundations and a methodology for survey-based tracking of well-being. First, we develop a theory in which utility depends on “fundamental aspects” of well-being, measurable with surveys. Second, drawing from psychologists, philosophers, and economists, we compile a comprehensive list of such aspects. Third, we demonstrate our proposed method for estimating the aspects’ relative marginal utilities—a necessary input for constructing an individual-level well-being index—by asking ~4,600 U.S. survey respondents to state their preference between pairs of aspect bundles. We estimate high relative marginal utilities for aspects related to family, health, security, values, freedom, happiness, and life satisfaction.
Keywords: happiness, life satisfaction, subjective well-being, stated preference, well-being indexNCBI
Beyond Happiness and Satisfaction: Toward Well-Being Indices Based on Stated Preference
Daniel J. Benjamin, Miles S. Kimball, Ori Heffetz, and Nichole Szembrot
4 comments:
So, these 'experts' want to track 'well-being'; then the first thing they do, is develop a theory of well-being??? Then they measure aspects of their theory?????
I want to track 'love'. Should I then develop a theory of love; or should I simply experience love? If I did, I would realise that love cannot be measured and neither can well-being. Well-being on the outside is conditional (so it is not really well-being) and well-being on the inside is real and unconditional. Neither does it have boundaries or walls. To the depth that you can plumb your 'being', you will discover what the 'well' can hold. That would be my understanding of it. If you try to pick up something on the outside and hold it up and say, well, is that my well-being (?) - you are one day, going to be sorely disappointed; setting yourself up for disappointment. If people want to understand well-being they should look inside and 'feel' what is there.
Dear Mike,
I don't criticise you - I agree with most/all of what you endorse (MMT-based theory etc). However, these clowns are trying to pull a fast one - as usual, they are a bunch of mainstream economists who have "discovered" heterodox methods and theory elsewhere which they seek to pass off as their own.
Thurstone (1927) provided the statistical basis of what they propose - Random Utility Theory. If we are looking for an economist who made a real contribution to the field we need look no further than McFadden, the (co) winner of the "Economics Nobel" in 2000 for showing how this could predict demand (the BART in California – BEFORE it was even built!) And I know you prefer stuff that actually passes the "does it predict stuff" test :-)
However, all the theory was also developed in mathematical psychology in the 1960s by Duncan Luce and Tony Marley (who is still active in the field, and with whom I have the honour of co-authoring).
Using this to elicit the public's preferences for aspects of well-being (and specifically operationalising Sen’s approach) is NOT new. There are various groups who have been doing it for close to two decades. A lot of the early work limited itself to health-related quality of life, but work to value general well-being, including fully operationalising Sen's Capabilities Approach, was well underway by 2006 by the group in which I was working. I see no references to that work by these authors. Again, I find it staggering that mainstream economists can get away with such poor reviews of the literature – but again, the literature in which we published all this stuff is literature they don’t consider “worthy”.
I could go through their article point by point demolishing the out of date rubbish they propose (preferences with descriptors such as “somewhat prefer” which have been shown to be rubbish in the marketing and applied economics literature) but I now work in industry and have better things to do. My clients would not give their stuff a single glance, let alone a second one.
Some references showing how to do this using methods that have a 90 year pedigree are given below. It is a shame these “proper” economists do not see fit to reference them. And people wonder why I left academia? My first reference is a test-book that includes a chapter detailing work done several years ago demonstrating what they want to do, and with much better methods. I will put the hyperlink to it as a separate link since I know many anti-spam programs screen these out and I’d rather the details got out than the html link.
refs in sepatate post
Hi Mike - here are the references to the post I just made.
Best-Worst Scaling: Theory, Methods and Applications (2015). Louviere JJ, Flynn TN, Marley AAJ. Cambridge University Press.
A law of comparative judgment (1927). Thurstone, L. L. Psychological Review 34, 273-286
Conditional logit analysis of qualitative choice behaviour (1974). Frontiers in Econometrics (Zarembka P – ed); 105-142.
Developing attributes for a generic quality of life measure for older people: Preferences or capabilities? (2006) I Grewal, J Lewis, T Flynn, J Brown, J Bond, J Coast. Social science & medicine 62 (8), 1891-1901
Best-worst scaling: What it can do for health care research and how to do it. (2007) TN Flynn, JJ Louviere, TJ Peters, J Coast. Journal of Health Economics 26 (1), 171-189
Probabilistic models of set-dependent and attribute-level best-worst choice (2008). AAJ Marley, TN Flynn, JJ Louviere. Journal of Mathematical Psychology 52 (5), 281-296
Quantifying response shift or adaptation effects in quality of life by synthesising best-worst scaling and discrete choice data (2013). TN Flynn, TJ Peters, J Coast. Journal of choice modelling 6, 34-43
Using discrete choice experiments to understand preferences for quality of life. Variance-scale heterogeneity matters (2010). TN Flynn, JJ Louviere, TJ Peters, J Coast. Social Science & Medicine 70 (12), 1957-1965
Valuing the ICECAP capability index for older people (2008). J Coast, TN Flynn, L Natarajan, K Sproston, J Lewis, JJ Louviere. Social Science & Medicine 67 (5), 874-882
Developing attributes for a generic quality of life measure for older people: Preferences or capabilities? (2006) I Grewal, J Lewis, T Flynn, J Brown, J Bond, J Coast. Social science & medicine 62 (8), 1891-1901
I decided to make a full post on this subject on my own blog. See below for it:
http://www.terryflynn.net/top-economists-fail-basic-literature-review-shock-horror/
Cheers,
Terry
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