I’ve just posted online a new paper on “Theories of Contextual Judgement in Relation to Well-Being and Other Outcomes”. This is a more a review-type effort and summarizes my thoughts (and reading of the existing literature) from the last year or so in relation to “relative” utility, status races and general contextual judgement/utility.
Abstract:
The paper presents an overview of existing theories on contextual judgement/utility situating them within a general framework. We consider the extent to which these theories are empirically distinguishable and apply them to some well-known economic questions such as the relation of happiness and the income distribution, status races and quitting.