Mispredicting Subjective Well-Being and Individual Welfare
2016/06/03
研討會日期 : 2016-06-03
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Alois Stutzer
主持人 : Professor Kamhon Kan
地點 : Conference Room B110
演講者簡介 : Prof. Stutzer received his Ph.D. in Economics from University of Zurich in 2001. He is currently a Professor of Public Choice and Public Economics at Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel. His research fields are public economics, political economics, law and economics, economics and psychology, and labor economics.
演講摘要 : The question whether people correctly predict their future utility levels when facing a major life event poses a challenge for traditional economics. To ensure utility maximizing decision-making, neoclassical utility theory is based on two fundamental assumptions: First, people, on average, correctly estimate the probabilities of possible decision outcomes. Second, they know their future preferences. If these assumptions do not hold, people are unable to form correct expectations about the utility that they will derive from alternative situations. This might affect decisions and consequently undermine the validity of inferring preferences from observed behavior. In my presentation, two issues related to the idea of utility misprediction are addressed: First, novel evidence is presented on how successful people are at predicting the development of their future utility in response to major life events. Second, the consequences for welfare analysis are discussed.
