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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits, John Bronsteen, Christopher J, Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur
Faculty Scholarship
This Essay examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on the probability of pretrial settlement in civil litigation. The existing economic and behavioral models of settlement are incomplete because they do not incorporate the effect of adaptation on the sum for which a plaintiff is willing to accept an offer. When an individual first suffers a serious injury, she will likely predict that the injury will greatly diminish her future happiness. However, during the time that …
Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan
Introducing A ‘Different Lives’ Approach To The Valuation Of Health And Well-Being, Matthew D. Adler, Paul Dolan
Faculty Scholarship
We introduce a new "different lives" survey format, which asks respondents to rank hypothetical lives described in terms of longevity, health, happiness, income, and other elements of the quality of life. In this short paper, we show that the format is of policy relevance whether a mental state, preference satisfaction or extra-welfarist account of well-being is adopted and discuss some of the advantages the format has over standard formats, such as contingent valuation surveys and QALY-type methods. An exploratory survey indicates that the format is feasible and that health and happiness might be more important than income and life expectancy.