Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name:  Bechetti, Leonardo
Author-Email: becchetti@economia.uniroma2.it
Author-Name:  Conzo, Pierluigi
Author-Email: pierluigi.conzo@unito.it
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Turin
Author-Workplace-Homepage: http://www.est.unito.it/
Title: The gustibus errari (pot)est”:utility misprediction, preferences for well-being and life satisfaction".
Abstract: The life satisfaction literature generally focuses on how life events affect subjective well-being.
Through a contingent valuation survey we test whether well-being preferences have significant impact on life satisfaction.
A sample of respondents is asked to simulate a policymaker decision consisting in allocating scarce financial resources 
among 11 well-being domains.
Consistently with the utility misprediction hypothesis, we find that the willingness to invest more in the economic
well-being domain is negatively correlated with life satisfaction.
Our findings are shown to be robust when we account for unobservables related to economic fragility and non-random sample
selection. Revers e causality and omitted variable bias are controlled for with instrumental variables and a sensitivity 
analysis on departures from exogeneity assumptions. Subsample estimates document that the less educated are more affected 
by the problem.
Length: 62 pages
Creation-Date: 2014-07
File-URL: http://www.est.unito.it/do/home.pl/Download?doc=/allegati/wp2014dip/wp_21_2014.pdf
File-Format: Application/PDF
Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201421