英文标题：
《A critique of the econometrics of happiness: Are we underestimating the
  returns to education and income?》
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作者：
Christopher P Barrington-Leigh
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最新提交年份：
2018
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英文摘要：
  A large \"happiness\", or life satisfaction, literature in economics makes use of Likert-like scales in assessing survey respondents\' cognitive evaluations of their lives. These measures are being used to estimate economic benefits in every empirical field of economics. Typically, analysis of these data have shown remarkably low direct returns of education for improving subjective well-being. In addition, arguably, the inferred impact of material wealth and income using this method is also unexpectedly low as compared with other, social factors, and as compared with economists\' prior expectations which underlie, in some sense, support for using GDP as a proxy for more general quality of life goals. Discrete response scales used ubiquitously for the reporting of life satisfaction pose cognitive challenges to survey respondents, so differing cognitive abilities result in different uses of the scale, and thus potential bias in statistical inference. This problem has so far gone unnoticed. An overlooked feature of the distribution of responses to life satisfaction questions is that they exhibit certain enhancements at focal values, in particular at 0, 5, and 10 on the eleven-point scale. In this paper, I investigate the reasons for, and implications of, these response patterns. I use a model to account for the focal-value behavior using a latent variable approach to capture the \"internal\" cognitive evaluation before it is translated to the discrete scale of a survey question. This approach, supported by other more heuristic ones, finds a significant upward correction for the effects of both education and income on life satisfaction.
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中文摘要：
经济学文献中的一个大型“幸福感”或生活满意度，利用利科特式量表来评估调查对象对其生活的认知评估。在经济学的每个实证领域，这些指标都被用来估计经济效益。通常，对这些数据的分析表明，改善主观幸福感的教育直接回报率非常低。此外，可以说，与其他社会因素相比，以及与经济学家先前的预期相比，使用这种方法推断出的物质财富和收入的影响也出人意料地低，而经济学家先前的预期在某种意义上支持将GDP作为更普遍的生活质量目标的代表。普遍用于报告生活满意度的离散反应量表对调查对象构成认知挑战，因此不同的认知能力导致量表的使用不同，从而导致统计推断中的潜在偏差。到目前为止，这个问题还没有引起注意。生活满意度问题回答分布的一个被忽视的特点是，他们在焦点值上表现出一定的增强，尤其是在11分制的0、5和10分制上。在本文中，我调查了这些反应模式的原因和含义。我使用一个模型来解释焦点价值行为，使用潜变量方法来捕获“内部”认知评估，然后将其转换为调查问题的离散量表。这种方法得到了其他更具启发性的方法的支持，发现教育和收入对生活满意度的影响都有显著的向上修正。
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分类信息：

一级分类：Economics        经济学
二级分类：Econometrics        计量经济学
分类描述：Econometric Theory, Micro-Econometrics, Macro-Econometrics, Empirical Content of Economic Relations discovered via New Methods, Methodological Aspects of the Application of Statistical Inference to Economic Data.
计量经济学理论，微观计量经济学，宏观计量经济学，通过新方法发现的经济关系的实证内容，统计推论应用于经济数据的方法论方面。
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一级分类：Economics        经济学
二级分类：General Economics        一般经济学
分类描述：General methodological, applied, and empirical contributions to economics.
对经济学的一般方法、应用和经验贡献。
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一级分类：Quantitative Finance        数量金融学
二级分类：Economics        经济学
分类描述：q-fin.EC is an alias for econ.GN. Economics, including micro and macro economics, international economics, theory of the firm, labor economics, and other economic topics outside finance
q-fin.ec是econ.gn的别名。经济学，包括微观和宏观经济学、国际经济学、企业理论、劳动经济学和其他金融以外的经济专题
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