Working Paper: NBER ID: w18927
Authors: Daniel J. Benjamin; Ori Heffetz; Miles S. Kimball; Alex Rees-Jones
Abstract: We survey 561 students from U.S. medical schools shortly after they submit choice rankings over residencies to the National Resident Matching Program. We elicit (a) these choice rankings, (b) anticipated subjective well-being (SWB) rankings, and (c) expected features of the residencies (such as prestige). We find substantial differences between choice and anticipated-SWB rankings in the implied tradeoffs between residency features. In our data, evaluative SWB measures (life satisfaction and Cantril's ladder) imply tradeoffs closer to choice than does affective happiness (even time-integrated), and as close as do multi-measure SWB indices. We discuss implications for using SWB data in applied work.
Keywords: Subjective Wellbeing; Marginal Rates of Substitution; Residency Choices
JEL Codes: C81; D03
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| residency prestige and status in the choice regression (C25) | higher valuation in choice than in happiness (D46) |
| anticipated SWB measures (C87) | underweight residency prestige and status (I32) |
| anticipated SWB measures (C87) | overweight social life and life seeming worthwhile during the residency (I31) |
| evaluative SWB measures (life satisfaction and Cantril's ladder) (I31) | yield results closer to choice-based estimates (C51) |
| differences in coefficients across choice and SWB measures (C25) | statistically significant (C12) |