This paper discusses the discounted utility (DU) model: its historical development,
underlying assumptions, and “anomalies”-the empirical regularities that are inconsistent with …

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a survey on the labor supply of men. This survey
of male labor supply covers the determinants of whether men work for pay in the labor …

We develop a theory of rational addiction in which rationality means a consistent plan to
maximize utility over time. Strong addiction to a good requires a big effect of past …

We examine self-control problems—modeled as time-inconsistent, present-biased
preferences—in a model where a person must do an activity exactly once. We emphasize …

In recent years, there has been a steadily increasing interest on the part of economists in
happiness research. We argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical …

Today, as in the past, within a country at a given time those with higher incomes are, on
average, happier. However, raising the incomes of all does not increase the happiness of …

Material aspirations are initially fairly similar among income groups; consequently more
income brings greater happiness. Over the life cycle, however, aspirations grow along with …

Curiously, economists, whose discipline has much to do with human well-being, have shied
away from factoring the study of happiness into their work. Happiness, they might say, is …

BECAUSE PSYCHOLOGY systemati-cally explores human judgment, behavior, and well-
being, it can teach us important facts about how humans differ from the way tlhey are …

The equity premium puzzle, identified by Mehra and Prescott, states that, for plausible
values of the risk aversion coefficient, the difference of the expected rate of return on the …