TY  - JOUR
AU  - Barrington-Leigh,Christopher P.
AU  - Helliwell,John F.
TI  - Empathy and Emulation: Life Satisfaction and the Urban Geography of Comparison Groups
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14593
PY  - 2008
Y2  - December 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14593
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14593.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
and Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
997 - 1873 East Mall
Vancouver, B.C.  V6T 1Z1 
CANADA
E-Mail: cpbl@wellbeing.econ.ubc.ca

John F. Helliwell
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
and Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-4953
Fax: 604/822-5915
E-Mail: john.helliwell@ubc.ca
AB  - Departures from self-centred, consumption-oriented decision making are increasingly common in economic theory and are well motivated by a wide range of behavioural data from experiments, surveys, and econometric inference. A number of studies have shown large negative externalities in individual subjective well-being due to neighbours' incomes. These reflect the role of nearby households as comparison groups acting in individuals' reference-dependent preferences over income or consumption. At the same time, there are many reasons to expect positive spillovers from having prosperous neighbours. We combine high-resolution geographic data from three Canada-wide social surveys and the 2001 census to disentangle the spatial pattern of reference groups in urban areas and to identify channels of positive and negative spillovers on life satisfaction. We find evidence of significant effects of others' income at different scales and are able to reject a number of alternative explanations for the findings.
ER  -