题目：SUPERSTITIONS, STREET TRAFFIC, AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING

时间：2015年10月14日 星期三     12:00 – 14:00

地点：明德主楼714

报告人： 陆方文

摘要：

Congestion plays a central role in urban and transportation economics. Existing estimates of congestion costs rely on stated or revealed preferences studies. We explore a complementary measure of congestion costs based on self-reported happiness. Exploiting quasi-random variation in daily congestion in Beijing that arises because of superstitions about the number four, we estimate a strong effect of daily congestion on self-reported happiness. When benchmarking this effect against the relationship between income and self-reported happiness we compute implied congestion costs that are several times larger than conventional estimates. Several factors, including the value of reliability and externalities on non-travelers, can reconcile our alternative estimates with the existing literature.

报告人简介：陆方文，中国人民大学经济学院副教授，毕业于加州大学伯克利分校，曾在Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Labor Economics等期刊发文。