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


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    Title :

    Superstitions, Street Traffic, and Subjective Well-Being



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2015


    Size :

    1 Online-Ressource


    Remarks:

    Campusweiter Zugriff (Universität Hannover) - Vervielfältigungen (z.B. Kopien, Downloads) sind nur von einzelnen Kapiteln oder Seiten und nur zum eigenen wissenschaftlichen Gebrauch erlaubt. Keine Weitergabe an Dritte. Kein systematisches Downloaden durch Robots.



    Type of media :

    Book


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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