Peter Martinsson

Do You Enjoy Having More than Others? Survey Evidence of Positional Goods

Although conventional economic theory proposes that only the absolute levels of income and consumption matter for people’s utility, there is much evidence that relative concerns are often important. This paper uses a survey-experimental method to measure people’s perceptions of the degree to which such concerns matter, i.e. the degree of positionality. Based on a representative sample in Sweden, income and cars are found to be highly positional, on average. This is in contrast to leisure and car safety, which may even be completely non-positional.

Trust and Religion: Experimental Evidence from Rural Bangladesh

Trust is measured using both survey questions and a trust experiment among a random sample of Muslim and Hindu household heads in rural Bangladesh. We found no significant effect of the social distance between Hindus and Muslims in the trust experiment in terms of the proportions sent or returned. However, the survey responses do indicate significant differences. Both Hindus and Muslims were found to trust others from their own religion more than they trust people from other religions. Moreover, Hindus, the minority, trust other people less in general, and Hindus trust Muslims more than Muslims trust Hindus.

Are Commercial Fishers Risk-Lovers?

Fishers are risk-averse according to most empirical studies, while expected-utility theory predicts risk neutrality even for sizable stakes. We test this prediction using data from a stated-choice experiment with Swedish commercial fishers. Our results show that only 48% of the fishers can be broadly characterized as risk-neutral, while 26% are modestly risk-averse, and 26% are strongly risk-averse. Fishers are more risk-neutral the higher the fraction of their household’s income comes from fishing. Sensitivity testing implies that modest stake decisions like a few days of fishing are not influenced by wealth level. (JEL D81; Q22)

Are some lives more valuable? An ethical preferences approach

We develop a theoretical model of the ethical preferences of individuals, combining individual social welfare functions and random utility theory. The model is applied by conducting a choice experiment regarding safety-enhancing road investments that target different age groups and road user types. The relative value of a saved life is found to decrease with age, such that the present value of a saved life-year is almost independent of age at a pure rate of time preference of a few percent. Moreover, a saved pedestrian is consistently valued higher than a saved car driver of the same age.

The marginal values of noise disturbance from air traffic: does the time of the day matter?

This paper analyzes the marginal willingness to pay for changes in noise levels related to changes in the volume of flight movements at a city airport in Stockholm, Sweden, by using a choice experiment. When estimating marginal willingness to pay for different times of the day and days of the week, we find that these vary with the temporal dimensions: mornings and evenings have higher marginal values. Interestingly, a substantial proportion of the respondents prefer no changes in the current noise level. The paper concludes with a policy discussion related to incentive-based pricing.

Are Vietnamese Farmers Concerned with their Relative Position in Society

Abstract This paper examines the attitude towards relative position or status among rural households in Vietnam. On average, respondents show rather weak preferences for relative position. Possible explanations are the emphasis on the importance of equality and that villagers are very concerned with how the local community perceives their actions. We also investigate what influences the concern for relative position and find, among other things, that if anyone from the household is a member of the Peoples Committee then the respondent is more concerned with the relative position.

What Contributes to Life Satisfaction in Transitional Romania

This paper analyzes life satisfaction in Romania in 2001, 12 years after the collapse of communism and the beginning of the transition into a market economy. Using a survey of 1770 individuals, we find that our results are very similar to studies in Western Europe and the USA. Life satisfaction increases with housing standard, health status, economic situation, education, trusting other people, and living in the countryside, and decreases with rising unemployment. However, life satisfaction is lower than in Western countries with about 74% of the people in the sample being not at all satisfied or not quite satisfied with their life in general, and the remaining part being quite satisfied or very satisfied. A policy discussion concludes the paper.

RISK TAKING FOR ONESELF AND OTHERS: A STRUCTURAL MODEL APPROACH

Economic theory makes no predictions about social factors affecting decisions under risk. We examine situations in which a decision maker decides for herself and another person under conditions of payoff equality, and compare them to individual decisions. By estimating a structural model, we find that responsibility leaves utility curvature unaffected, but accentuates the subjective distortion of very small and very large probabilities for both gains and losses. We also find that responsibility reduces loss aversion, but that these results only obtain under some specific definitions of the latter. These results serve to generalize and reconcile some of the still largely contradictory findings in the literature. They also have implications for financial agency, which we discuss.

Does It Matter if You Are Observed by Others? Evidence from Donations in the Field*

We investigate whether peoples donations in the field are affected by the presence of others. In the analysis, we distinguish between individuals who arrived at a national park alone and those who arrived as members of a group. We also investigated the effect of donations being made in the presence of a third party made in the presence of a third party. We find that donations are significantly more frequent for individuals who are members of a group. When a third party is present, we find that the total donations by individuals who are a part of a group are significantly higher than those of lone travelers, mainly because of the increased probability of donating.

The Effect of Religiosity and Religious Festivals on Positional Concerns: An Experimental Investigation of Ramadan

This article examines the effect of religion on positional concerns using survey experiments. We focus on two of the dimensions of religion – degree of religiosity and religious festivals. By conducting the experiments during both the most important day of Ramadan (the Night of Power) and a day outside Ramadan, we find that Ramadan overall has a small and negative impact on positional concerns. Detailed analyses based on the sorting of individuals’ degree of religiosity reveal that the decrease in the degree of positional concerns during Ramadan is mainly explained by a decrease in positionality among individuals with a low degree of religiosity.