This paper uses Japanese data which includes measures of self-declared satisfaction, reference-group income, and the direction and intensity of income comparisons. Relative to Europeans, the Japanese compare more to friends and less to colleagues, and compare their incomes more. The relationship...

This paper uses Japanese data which includes measures of self-declared satisfaction, reference-group income, and the direction and intensity of income comparisons. Relative to Europeans, the Japanese compare more to friends and less to colleagues, and compare their incomes more. The relationship...

Economists have long been concerned that negative attitudes about relative income reduce social welfare. This paper investigates whether such attitudes can be mitigated by a simple information treatment. Toward this end, we conducted an original randomized online survey experiment in the US and...

While there is now something of a consensus in the literature on the economics of happiness that income comparisons to others help determine subjective wellbeing, debate continues over the relative importance of own and reference-group income, in particular in research on the Easterlin paradox....

Economists have long been aware of utility externalities such as a tendency to compare own income with others'. If welfare losses from income comparisons are significant, any governmental interventions that alter such attitudes may have large welfare consequences. We conduct an original online...

Economists have long been aware of utility externalities such as a tendency to compare own income with others'. If welfare losses from income comparisons are significant, any governmental interventions that alter such attitudes may have large welfare consequences. We conduct an original online...