Is man doomed to progress?

Claudia Senik (1, 2, 3, 4)

1 UP4 - Université Paris-Sorbonne
2 PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques
3 IZA - Institute for the Study of Labor
4 PSE - Paris School of Economics

This paper is dedicated to the empirical exploration of the welfare effect of expectations and progress per se. Using ten waves of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, a panel household survey rich in subjective variables, the analysis suggests that for a given total stock of inter-temporal consumption, agents are more satisfied with an increasing time-profile of consumption: they seem to have a strong "taste for improvement".

Mots clés: panel data; adaptation; subjective happiness; growth; expectations

Domaines: Economies et finances

Claudia Senik. Is man doomed to progress?. 2007. ⟨halshs-00590519⟩