Homa Zarghamee

Testing Social Preferences for an Economic 'Bad': An Artefactual Field Experiment

We test for social preferences over a commodity in an artefactual field experiment using the random price voting mechanism. Subjects are university staff members, and the commodity is water “contaminated” by a sterilized cockroach. Our results suggest that social preferences exist with respect to commodities and “bads”, supporting a more general utility framework for social preferences. Our empirical test allows for the coexistence of three social-preference models; our results support the models of Fehr and Schmidt (1999) and Charness and Rabin (2002), but not the model of Bolton and Ockenfels (2000). Also, we find that incorporating social preferences improves the efficiency of majority-rules voting.

Trends in the Happiness of Single Mothers: Evidence from the General Social Survey

We study the subjective well being (SWB) of single mothers from 1972 to 2008 using data from the General Social Survey. While past literature has examined the outcomes of single mothers, an investigation of SWB is warranted, since it has been shown that there are potentially large slippages between economic indicators and SWB. Our results indicate that (i) single mothers report being significantly less happy than non-single-mothers, and (ii) this “happiness gap” shrank between 1972 and 2008.

Positive Affect and Overconfidence: A Laboratory Investigation

We conduct a carefully-designed random-assignment experiment to investigate whether mild positive affect impacts overconfidence. Our result indicates that, compared to neutral affect, mild positive affect significantly increases overconfidence. This result is robust to various specification checks. Our result has implications for the effect of happiness on overconfidence and the role of emotions in economic decision making, in general. Finally, we reconfirm the ubiquity of overconfidence and start to explore its determinants.

Subjective-Well-Being Inequality and Per Capita Income: Evidence from the World Values

The field of “Happiness Research” has grown markedly. A central question is whether economic growth increases mean Subjective Well Being (SWB), one measure of which is happiness.Cross-sectional analysis clearly indicates that there is a positive relationship between income and SWB. However, in time series this relationship may vanish (the Easterlin Paradox). In this paper, we examine the relationship between economic growth and SWB inequality using data from the World Values Survey and World Development Indicators. The results indicate that economic growth is inversely related to SWB inequality in cross-sectional analysis. There is also evidence that for most countries – 23 out of 26 in the dataset – greater economic growth is associated with a greater decrease in SWB inequality.

Do Gender‐Variant Preferences for Competition Persist in the Absence of Performance?

The well‐established gender gap in preferences for competition has been attributed to gender‐variant feelings about performing in competitive environments. Using a novel task with agency, in which subjects experience competition but cannot perform, we find evidence that performing may be sufficient but not necessary to generate gender‐variant preferences for competition. This suggests that the gender‐gap cannot be eliminated by correcting beliefs alone; that eliminating performance - for example, routinizing tasks - may not eliminate the gender gap; and that there may be heretofore unidentified determinants of preferences for competition - for example, men may prefer payment schemes that are based on social comparison.

Inequality of Happiness: Evidence of the Compression of the Subjective-Well-Being Distribution with Economic Growth

The use of Subjective Wellbeing (SWB) measures in economics research has grown markedly (Kahneman and Krueger 2006). This has come about for at least two reasons. First, the measures have been systematically validated as reliable for examining a range of questions. Second, economists have long relied on income as a proxy for wellbeing. However, research shows that there are potentially large slippages between economic indicators and wellbeing (Diener and Seligman 2004). Thus, SWB measures have become an important alternative proxy for wellbeing. Indeed, SWB measures have also caught the attention of policy makers. The OECD launched the Better Life Index in 2011 as an alternative wellbeing measure; and the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy formed the Stiglitz Commission in 2008 to identify the limits of gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of wellbeing and to identify alternative measures (Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi 2010).

Ethics and Experimental Economics

A variety of ethical considerations in designing, conducting, and reporting both laboratory and field experiments in economics are reviewed. An important area of ethical concern in experimental economics stems from its use of human subjects. The standards used by Institutional Review Boards to sanction research using human subjects are expounded upon, with an emphasis on application to economics experiments. The authors draw from other experimental researchers and from their own experience to discuss issues related to the interaction of experimenter and subject—e.g., deception, informed consent, blindness, and monetary incentives—and issues related to the interaction of experimenter and consumer of research—e.g., the reporting of negative results, pilot data, or details of the experiment that may offer alternative interpretations of results.