Discussion Paper No. 930

INCOME-COMPARISON ATTITUDESIN THE US AND THE UK:
EVIDENCE
FROM DISCRETE-CHOICE
EXPERIMENTS
Hitoshi Shigeoka
Katsunori Yamada

March 2015
Revised February 2016

The Institute of Social and Economic Research
Osaka University
6-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan

Income-comparison Attitudes in the US and the UK:
Evidence from Discrete-choice Experiments∗
Hitoshi Shigeoka†

Katsunori Yamada‡

Abstract
Economists have long been aware of utility externalities such as a tendency to compare
own income with others’. If welfare losses from income comparisons are significant, any
governmental interventions that alter such attitudes may have large welfare consequences. We
conduct an original online survey of discrete-choice questions to estimate such attitudes in the
US and the UK. We find that the UK respondents compare incomes more than US respondents
do. We then manipulate our respondents with simple information to examine whether theattitudes can be altered. Our information treatment—suggesting that comparing income
with others may diminish welfare even when income levels increase—makes UK respondents
compare incomes more rather than less. Interestingly, US respondents are not aﬀected at all.
The mechanism behind the UK results seems to be that our treatment gives moral license to
make income comparisons by providing information that others do so.

Keywords: income comparison, discrete-choice experiment, inter-country survey, information treatment, randomized survey experiment.

JEL classifications: C9, D1, D3.
∗

Previously titled as “Can We Steer Income-comparison Attitudes by Information Provision?: Evidence from

Randomized Survey Experiments in the US and the UK.” Yamada acknowledges financial support from JSPS
(24683006). We are grateful to Glenn Harrison, Hideki Hashimoto, Frank Heinemann, Chen-Ying Huang, Hidehiko Ichimura, Michihiro Kandori, Erik Kimbrough, Andrew McGee, Rosemarie Nagel, Krishna Pendakur, Yasuyuki
Sawada, Yasutora Watanabe, and seminar participants at Academia Sinica, Barcelona GSE Summer Forum, GRIPS,HKSTU, Hokkaido University, Kobe University, Kyoto University, National Taiwan University, Nangyang Technological University, Osaka Prefecture University, Osaka University, Simon Fraser University, Tohoku University,
University of Tokyo, and Yokohama National University for their comments. Any remaining errors are ours.
†
Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A1S6, Canada and
NBER. Email: hitoshi shigeoka@sfu.ca‡
Faculty of Economics, Kindai University, 228-3 Shin-Kami-Kosaka, Higashi-osaka City, Osaka 577-0813, Japan.
E-mail: kyamada@kindai.ac.jp1

1

Introduction

Economists have long been aware of utility externalities such as a tendency to compare own
income with others’ (e.g., Duesenberry 1949; Akerlof and Yellen 1990). If welfare losses fromincome comparisons are significant, any governmental interventions that alter such attitudes may
have large welfare consequences.1 Indeed, recent studies have accumulated empirical support that
relative income negatively impacts job satisfaction (e.g., Clark and Oswald 1996; Card et al. 2012),
happiness (e.g., Luttmer 2005; Ferrer-i Carbonell 2005), health and longevity (e.g., Marmot 2004;
Eibner and Evans 2005), and risk of suicide (Daly et al. 2013).
There are two objectives in this paper. Firstly, we measure baseline income-comparison attitudes for the US and the UK. Toward this end, we conduct an original online survey using
nationally representative sample of each country, which is an important virtue of our study. Drawing macroeconomic pictures of income comparisons between countries are beneficial: An elaborate
work by Cole et al. (1992) shows that diﬀerences in social preference can explain diﬀerences in
the macroeconomic performances of two countries with very similar economic fundamentals, suchas the US and the UK. Our work on these two countries oﬀers a unique opportunity to test thepresumptions of Cole et al. (1992).
Estimation of income-comparison attitudes for diﬀerent countries in a way that allows directinter-country analysis is challenging. A traditional way of measuring income-comparison attitudes
is to directly ask a question such as “How important is it for you to compare your income withother people’s incomes?”2 Despite its apparent simplicity, inter-country analysis based on such
subjective evaluations can be problematic when these countries do not share the same assessment
rules or sense of scale (King et al. 2004). For example, it is diﬃcult to compare a score of ‘3’ inthe US and score of ‘6’ in the UK from subjective evaluations. Additionally, it is diﬃcult to draw
any cardinal inferences from such ordinal survey responses.
Our novelty is that we estimate income-comparison attitudes for diﬀerent countries in a waythat makes comparison direct and meaningful.3 Concretely, we first set up a behavioral model1
In order to investigate if governmental interventions could be beneficial, researchers have to establish a welfare
criterion. See Loewenstein and Ubel (2008) and Benjamin et al. (2014) for thoughtful discussions on this point.
Our strategy in this paper is rather simple, in that we assume that welfare loss due to income comparisons canbe characterized with a utility function parameter. It is possible that income comparisons motivate people tobecome more competitive, thereby increasing eﬀort toward improving income level. We argue that these positiveeﬀects of income comparison are general equilibrium eﬀects. In this paper, however, we focus on partial equilibrium
aspects of income comparisons, keeping factors fixed other than the immediate welfare consequences due to income
comparisons.
2
For example, the subject chooses among 0–6, where 0 corresponds to “Not at all important” and 6 corresponds
to “Very important.”
3
Clark and Senik (2010) use subjective evaluation data on attitudes of income comparison from the European
Social Survey (Round 3), but information for the US is missing. Question V96 on the World Values Surveys 2010–2012 asks about the perception of income equality and egalitarianism, but while this question captures one aspect2

of income comparisons. In the model, utility function is linked to constant relative risk aversion(CRRA) (Gali 1994; Abel 1990; Dupor and Liu 2003) and others’ incomes work as negative externalities.4 We then estimate this parameter of utility externality with data from hypothetical
discrete choices questions, and respondents choose among two alternative combinations of hypothetical monthly income scenarios for themselves and their reference persons. Since we estimate autility function parameter, it is cardinal and thus comparable between countries.
After measuring baseline income-comparison attitudes for the two countries, our second objective is to investigate whether such attitudes can be altered by a simple information provision.
Our information provision is conducted on an experimental basis within the same survey. We
randomly assign respondents into treatment groups and a control group. We inform treatmentgroups that people tend to compare their incomes with those of others, and that such behavior
may diminish happiness even when absolute income is increasing. After the information provision,
income-comparison attitudes are again measured with discrete-choice questions as in the baseline
measurement. We then examine whether the intervention aﬀects income comparisons attitudes ina desired direction.
Our results are as follows. First, for the baseline country diﬀerences before information intervention, we find that respondents from the UK exhibit much stronger income-comparison attitudes(i.e., are more jealous) than those from the US, possibly indicating that welfare loss from income
comparison may be more severe in the UK than in the US. The diﬀerence is large and statistically significant, and it is robust to control for observable individual characteristics, such as age,gender, education, and own income. While we cannot control for other institutional and cultural
diﬀerences between two countries that are not observed in the data, we provide the first evidenceof diﬀerences in income-comparison attitudes between the US and the UK measured by a discretechoice approach. Our results are broadly consistent with Alesina et al. (2004), who documented
diﬀerences between the US and the UK in attitudes toward income redistribution.
Secondly, we find that information treatment strengthens the tendency for UK respondents tocompare incomes (i.e., become more jealous). This result indicates that our information treatment
guided UK respondents in a direction that may reduce welfare. Interestingly, US respondents are
not aﬀected by the intervention. Recall that at baseline UK respondents compare more than do
US respondents, so UK respondents are more jealous than US respondents from the beginningof social preferences, it does not address the intensity of income comparison.
4This setting implies that we have to exclude strategic components among respondents, so the respondents did
not interact in our survey. Also note that income comparison is one of many forms of social preference. Other
aspects include altruism, egalitarianism, reciprocity, and trust (e.g., Fehr and Falk 1999; Fehr and Schmidt 1999;
Charness and Rabin 2002; Fisman et al. 2007, Andreoni and Bernheim 2009; Andreoni and Rao 2011; Horton et al.
2011; Rand 2011; Hossain and Li 2014). Our approach of discrete-choice experiments diﬀers from that of mostliterature on social preferences using game-theoretical frameworks.

3and become even more jealous after the information intervention. Hence, country diﬀerences arepresent in not only absolute levels of income-comparison attitude but also responses to an externalintervention. In terms of the magnitude, our information treatment changes the income-comparison
attitude by one-tenth of the mean of the control group in the UK.
This eﬀect is robust to a number of sample selections. To avoid respondents who answered
without care or those who left the surveys open for days, we exclude those responses. In addition,
we limit the sample to those who correctly answered the verification question to ensure that
respondents understood the contents of the information provided. Such sample selections hardly
aﬀect our estimates.
Finally, we divide the UK sample by the baseline income-comparison attitudes to shed light on
the mechanism behind information treatment guiding UK respondents in an undesirable direction.
We find that our results are driven by those who are initially less comparison-conscious, not by
those who are initially jealous, implying that our information treatment raises the salience ofincome comparison rather than making people realize its negative consequences. Consequently,
our information treatment might have provided moral license for comparing income with others
by informing that other people do so.
Overall, our findings suggest that income-comparisons attitudes are relatively stable against our
information manipulation, but also that there is some scope for governmental intervention amonga certain type of population. Our results also imply that aﬀecting income comparison attitudes
in a desired direction can be diﬃcult. Because our information intervention is not decisive, given
our results, the government may better urge people to stop comparing incomes for the sake of
better social welfare (i.e., “you should not covet”).5 Apparently, this is a much stronger message
than our current information treatment. Further discussion will be required about how strong
such messages should be and what information the government should convey to alter incomecomparison attitudes in a favorable direction.
Our work is closely related to the literature on utility externality in macroeconomies. Abel
(1990), Gali (1994), and Dupor and Liu (2003) consider CRRA-type utility functions with comparison externalities, and investigate the asset pricing implications. There are also studies considering income comparisons expressed in the form of “degree of positionality” and investigating macroeconomic implications of such externalities on social welfare (Aronsson and Lofgren2008), public goods provision (Aronsson and Johansson-Stenman 2008, 2014b), optimal taxes(Aronsson and Johansson-Stenman 2010), and the sustainability of economies(Aronsson and Johansson-Stenman 2014a). Finally, Smets and Wouters (2003, 2007) consider
5

In this sense, our approach is similar to a paternalistic mode of intervention (Thaler and Sunstein 2003; Sunstein
and Thaler 2003), as we leave interpretation of the information to its recipients.

4comparisons in the form of external habit in the framework of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models.
This paper is also related to an emerging strand of literature that examines the eﬀects ofrandomized information treatment on individual preferences. For example, some studies have examined the eﬀect of information treatment on preferences for redistribution (see e.g., Cruces et al.
2013; Zilinsky 2014; Kuziemko et al. 2015).6 Cruces et al. (2013) provided information on true
income ranking and examined its eﬀect on the support for redistribution. Kuziemko et al. (2015)
also provided information on income inequality in the US, and investigated its impact on a wide
variety of redistributive policy outcomes.7
Finally, this paper is also related to a small but growing body of literature that uses online
platforms that allow random allocation of questionnaires across respondents. Most such papers
use Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online labor market in the US (e.g., Horton et al. 2011;
Kuziemko et al. 2015) as an online platform. In our survey, respondents between the ages of 20 and
65 are selected by stratified random sampling such that the cohort profiles of our sample intend
to mirror US and UK census data for age, gender, education, and geographic distribution.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes our original randomized online survey experiments. Section 3 reports the baseline diﬀerences in income-comparison
attitudes between the US and the UK. Section 4 reports our findings from the information treatment. Section 5 discusses alternative behavioral models, and Section 6 concludes.

2

Survey Experiment

2.1

Data collection

Our original survey experiment consists of three parts. See Appendix A1 for a flow chart.8 The
first part starts with twelve questions about socio-economic variables such as age, gender, race,
educational attainments, and total pre-tax income in 2013. For the sake of clarity, the exact phrases
for these first twelve questions were taken from the World Values Survey (2012) whenever available.
6
A few lab experiments have also examined the eﬀects of information treatment on individual preferences. For
example, Benjamin et al. (2010) made ethnic identity salient for laboratory respondents and examined how it
aﬀected time and risk preferences. Chen and Li (2009) measured the eﬀects of induced group identity on social
preferences in a laboratory setting. Also, using non-laboratory data, recent literature suggests that individual
preferences may be altered by large negative shocks, such as early-life financial experiences (Malmendier and Nagel
2011; Giuliano and Spilimbergo 2014), financial crises (Guiso et al. 2013), or changes in macroeconomic events andhousehold-level labor market outcomes (Krupka and Stephens 2013).
7
As in these previous studies, it is not our goal to determine whether changes in income-comparison attitudes
are the consequences of changes in deep preference themselves or in information sets with the deep preference fixed.
8
Survey questionnaires for the US and the UK are available as supplemental online material at
http://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/dp/2015/DP0930som.pdf.

5This is followed by seven questions about respondents’ subjective values. These included questions
about happiness, the intensity of comparisons of income with others, information on whose income
would they be most likely to compare their own with (hereafter, the “comparison benchmark”),
and the predicted income of the comparison benchmark. These questions were borrowed from
Clark and Senik (2010). The second part uses four repeated discrete-choice questions regarding
environmental policy, which were taken from Viscusi et al. (2008). Data obtained from this part are
not used in this paper. The final part starts with measuring income-comparison attitudes throughdiscrete-choice questions as our baseline. We explain how we measure income-comparison attitudes
in Section 2.3. After assessing baseline attitudes, we provide the randomized information treatment
to respondents as detailed in Section 2.2. Finally, we measure income-comparison attitudes again
to examine whether the information treatment impacts such attitudes.
Our online survey experiment was carried out from March 24 to April 3, 2014 (11 days).
As clearly documented in Horton et al. (2011), “[t]he validity of economics experiments depends
heavily upon trust, particularly respondents’ trust that the promulgated rules will be followed andthat all stated facts about payment are true.” As was the case in our previous original Internetbased survey with Japanese respondents, reported in Yamada and Sato (2013), Nikkei Research,
Inc., who maintains sample pools in the US and the UK and upholds high research ethics, waschosen to administer the survey. To maintain the quality of the data, Nikkei Research excludes
so-called “mindless respondents,” such as those who provide the same answer to all questions inany block of discrete-choice questions. The company also excludes observations when the time tofinish the survey is too short (< 4 min).
For each country, respondents between the ages of 20 and 65 are selected, using stratified
random sampling such that the cohort profile of the sample intended to mirror national census
statistics on age, gender, education, and geographical distribution. There are roughly 4,500 respondents in the US sample and about the same number in the UK sample. As we explain later,
because we have two treatment groups and one control group, respondents are categorized into
three groups for each country, so the sample size of each group is around 1,500 people.
In the invitation email sent to registered candidates, we specify that the survey is being conducted for research purposes and that the anonymity of respondents is secured. Note that thetitle of the survey is “Survey on socio-economic attitudes,” which is very generic and does notsuggest anything about income comparisons. We also inform respondents that the survey shouldtake about 15 min to complete. If candidates wish to participate in the survey, they are instructed
to click a link in the email, which directs them to our stand-alone survey website. At the start ofthe survey, they are informed that they can withdraw their participation at any time and that theycannot return to previously answered questions. The payment for completing the survey is USD1.5

6

for US respondents and GBP1 for UK respondents. Payment is only available upon completion of
the survey. The survey took respondents 13.4 min on average, and thus payment is equivalent toan average hourly wage of roughly USD6.7 for US respondents and GBP4.5 for UK respondents.
We take several steps to ensure the validity of the results. First, we limit the sample to only
residents of the US and the UK by asking respondents if they are US or UK residents at the
beginning of the survey. Second, to prohibit respondents from mindlessly skipping through thequestions, we enforce answering all but one question by not allowing respondents to proceed to
the next question unless they provide an answer.9 Third, to avoid mindless respondents or those
who left the survey open for days, we exclude such respondents in one of the robustness checks in
Section 4.4. Fourth, we ask a verification question to ensure that people understand the contentsof the information provided right after our information treatment. When a respondent answers
incorrectly on the verification question, we show the same figure and instruction one more time,and ask the same verification question again. We also limit the sample to those who correctly
answered the verification question in Section 4.4.

2.2

Information treatment

Our objective for information treatment is to alert our respondents to the existence of the hedonic
treadmill of income comparisons. To this end, we prepared a figure on the famous “Easterlin
paradox,” which indicates that income growth is not accompanied by an increase in happiness score.
Then, we follow the literature that suggests this happens because people compare their income
levels with those of others, and consequently an increase for all does not increase the happinessof anyone. We choose this figure—while being well aware that the paradox is not accepted by allacademics—because the story, illustrated with only two time-series plots of income and happiness
data, is one of the most simple and intuitive figures for allowing recipients to understand thepossible negative consequence of income comparison.10 Additionally, the figure itself is easy tounderstand and should not require high cognitive skill, even among general respondents who are
unfamiliar with economics.
In our survey experiment, there are two treatment groups (Treatment 1 and Treatment 2). We
describe each treatment in order.
The first treatment group is provided only the Easterlin paradox figure, accompanied by thefollowing very short descriptions of the observation.
9

Respondents could skip question 7A, which asks “What do you think was your reference group’s personal
TOTAL income, before taxes, last year (2013)?” We allow this exception due to the potential risk of resistance toreporting respondents’ expectations of others’ income. However, this exception does not seem to pose any issues
since there were only 11 (12) people who did not answer this question in the US (UK) sample.
10This “paradox” is challenged by Stevenson and Wolfers (2008), and Sacks et al. (2012). However, the scientificvalidity itself is not an issue for our research.

7

[W]hile real income per capita increases sharply, happiness showed essentially no trend
and has remained constant over time. From this figure, it looks as if individuals in the
United States are in the “flat part of the curve” with additional income buying little, ifany, extra happiness.
Figure 1 displays a screenshot of our first treatment for the US case. We used UK-specificfigures for the UK case. Note that this first treatment conveys only facts with data and does not
explain the implications of this figure.
The second treatment group sees exactly the same figure and short description that the firsttreatment group sees, but we additionally add the following two sentences as a possible explanation
for the observed relation.
It has been suggested by researchers that this happens because people tend to compare
their income levels against the incomes of others. As long as people compare theirincome against the incomes of others, increasing everyone’s income increases the happiness of no one.
It is apparent here that we add two pieces of information. The first sentence points out people’s
tendency to compare their income with others’, while the second one points out the possible
negative consequences of such income comparisons. It is, hence, not certain a priori whether our
information treatment will cause recipients to compare more or less with others (i.e., to become
more or less jealous). On the one hand, since we point out not only people’s tendency to comparewith each other but also its possible negative consequences, recipients who are made aware of thehedonic treadmill of income comparisons may stop comparing with others. On the other hand, if
our information treatment results in raising the salience of income comparisons and hence giving
a moral license to compare with others by informing that others do so, then recipients—especiallythose who were initially less conscious about others—may compare more after our information
treatment.
We provide the control group with information unrelated to income comparisons: a figure on
the extent of Arctic sea ice in February over the last 35 years. Appendix Figure A1 is a snapshotof our information treatment for the control group. We also give some explanations for the figurethat include roughly the same number of words as the treatment groups to give the same levelof cognitive burden. We use responses from people who receive this placebo treatment to assessthe diﬀerential response rates between treatment groups and the control group, and to account for
fatigue eﬀects in the survey experiment.
After the information treatment, we ask a simple verification question to ensure that the
respondents understand the provided information. For Treatment 1 and Treatment 2, the question8

is “While real income per capita has increased sharply, the trend of happiness has been [blank]”
and the choices are among “increasing”, “constant” (correct answer), and “decreasing”. For thecontrol group, the question is “The winter month trends of the Arctic Sea ice extent have been
[blank]”, and the choices are among “increasing”, “constant”, and “decreasing” (correct answer).
For those who incorrectly answer the verification question, we repeat the same question again
after showing the same figure and descriptions one more time. As the content in the information
treatments is simple, 76.6% of respondents answer the verification question correctly on the firstattempt, with 87.2% answering correctly after the second attempt.11 Importantly, the accuracy
rates among treatments are very similar: the accuracy rates for the first attempt are 76.8%, 78.7%,
and 74.4% for Treatment 1, Treatment 2, and the control group, respectively, and the accuracy
rates after the second attempt are 87.6%, 88.5%, and 85.3%. We did not repeat this verificationquestion more than once. Although this evidence is indirect, it is reassuring that our information
treatment seems to provide similar cognitive burdens.
Because the content of the information provided necessarily diﬀers by treatment group, one
common concern is that attrition may diﬀer by treatment group. Among those who initiated thesurvey, the attrition rate as a whole was 15.3% for the US and 17.9% for the UK, below the 22%
attrition rate using MTurk in Kuziemko et al. (2015). Among those who withdrew participation
before completion, only 12.7% (13.3%) of respondents did so after they received the information
treatment in the US (UK) case. Also, attrition that occurred after the treatment does not seem toqualitatively diﬀer by type of treatment. Specifically, among 106 (131) respondents who initiatedparticipation but withdrew after the information treatment in the US (UK) case, 30.0% (27.4%)
belonged to Treatment 1, 34.0% (35.9%) to Treatment 2, and the rest, 35.8% (36.6%), to the control
group. The slightly lower attrition rate for Treatment 1 may reflect that the instructions wereshorter by two sentences than those in Treatment 2.12 Unfortunately, we do not have information
on individual characteristics for those who withdrew from the survey, meaning we cannot examine
diﬀerential attrition by individual covariates, but attrition does not seem to drive our overall
results.

11

We consider this high accuracy rate of the small quiz to be fairly good. Rand (2011) reported that at least
80% of experiment participants in MTurk were not merely making random selections on survey questions, which issimilar to our figures.
12
In terms of the number of respondents, the diﬀerence between treatment groups 1 and 2 in those who withdrew
after receiving the treatment was only 4 in the US case and 11 in the UK case.

9

2.3

How to measure income-comparison attitudes: a discrete choice
approach and a random utility model

We describe how we measure the sign and magnitude of income-comparison attitudes from data of
discrete-choice questions. As stated earlier, income-comparison attitudes are measured twice forthe same individuals, before and after information treatment. Respondents are asked to choose
between two alternative situations, where each situation is a combination of hypothetical monthly
income amounts for both themselves and their reference persons (comparison benchmark). Respondents also have the option to choose “don’t know/cannot answer,” following the suggestions
by Arrow et al. (1993) and Haaijer et al. (2001).13
To enhance the reality in making choices over hypothetical income scenarios, we elicit information on each respondent’s comparison benchmark and impose the answers in the screenson discrete-choice questions.14 We are aware that there are both advantages and disadvantages
to making respondents choose their comparison benchmarks preceding discrete-choice questions.
While doing so increases the reality of income comparisons in hypothetical questions, it also forces
the respondent to picture comparison situations, which may induce respondents to think about
income comparisons more strongly than they normally do. We choose to emphasize reality, because
mindless responses could be an issue for an online survey. Also, as a robustness check, we add
dummies for each comparison benchmark to control for the choice of comparison benchmark in
the regression below. The results are virtually unchanged.
Table 1 presents a breakdown of comparison benchmarks chosen by US and UK respondents.
In the table, the top-five choices of comparison benchmark are the same between the US andthe UK. The highest fraction is “I don’t compare,” at 29% for US respondents and 27% for UK
respondents. This is followed by work colleagues, average people in the US (UK), close friends, andfamily members, in that order; each choice represents roughly 10–20%.15 These top-five choices
13
Arrow et al. (1993) and Haaijer et al. (2001) pointed out the importance of including a no-choice option in
hypothetical choice questions. In the main analysis, we remove the no-choice selections from consideration. An
alternative way is to interpret them as showing indiﬀerence between the two situations, rather than a failure tounderstand the survey question. Unfortunately, we have no information about the true reason why the no-choice
option was chosen.
14
The choice sets for the comparison benchmark are: 1. neighbors; 2. classmates from your school days; 3. closefriends; 4. family members; 5. family members of your children’s classmates; 6. work colleagues; 7. average people
in the US (UK); 8. friends or acquaintances other than the above; 9. others; 10. “don’t know”; 11. “I don’t
compare.” For those who answer either 9, 10, or 11, we encourage an income comparison with a reference group of“someone like you,” suggesting to those respondents that “in psychology, however, it has been known that people
tend to compare themselves, if anything, with those with the same age group, gender, and academic background asthemselves.”
15
One may think that respondents who choose family members as their comparison benchmark may try to
maximize the total income rather than to compare income levels. In fact, their comparison attitudes are slightly
lower (i.e., less jealous) than those who chose other categories as the comparison benchmarks. The diﬀerence,
however, is not statistically significant (results available upon request). Furthermore, to mitigate such concerns, we

10make up 85.3% (87.5%) of all choices for the US (UK). Interestingly, this pattern almost replicatesthe pattern found in the corresponding table of Clark and Senik (2010) for 18 European countries.
Before the respondents begin responding to repeated discrete-choice questions, they are showna screen displaying the following instructions.
In the following screens we show your hypothetical monthly income (before tax). Also
displayed in the same screen is your reference group’s monthly income (before tax).
Suppose that these are the current situations of your monthly income (before tax) andyour reference group’s monthly income (before tax).
In subsequent screens, we ask respondents to answer each hypothetical discrete-choice question
by choosing between two situations with each situation defined by two attributes: monthly pre-tax
income of respondents and that of the comparison benchmark.
Comparing situation 1 and situation 2 shown in the figures, which is more preferable
to you? Suppose that the price levels in the two situations are the same. Please choose
from the following options.
As a snapshot of such an example, Figure 2 asks respondents to choose among situation 1,
where own income is USD900 and reference group income is USD4900, and situation 2, where own
income is USD1800 and reference group income is USD2900. These income levels are chosen on thebasis of actual pre-tax monthly income quintiles in the US (UK): USD900 (GBP1,000), USD1,800(GBP1,500), USD2,900 (GBP2,000), USD4,900 (GBP3,000), and USD7,200 (GBP4,000).16
Such discrete income choice questions are repeated six times both before and after the information treatment (i.e., a total of 12 times) for each respondent. We prepared a total of 25 variationsof choice questions, and 12 of those 25 are randomly assigned to each participant. Hence, no participant answers the same question twice. Appendix Table A1 presents all 25 variations of choicequestion used in this study. Importantly, following Louviere et al. (2000), we maintained orthogonality in choosing alternatives choices in discrete-choice questions. This method eﬀectively pairs
multi-dimensional and multiple-level attributes in alternatives, and provides the greatest amountof information using the least number of observations. The details of how we constructed thesehypothetical discrete-choice questions are described in Appendix A2.
From respondents’ choices of preferred income scenarios in our hypothetical choice questions,
we estimate the relative importance of own and reference person’s income, that is, utility function
exclude those respondents (11.80% in the US and 8.80% in the UK) from our main analyses, but as shown later theestimates are not aﬀected.
16
The sources of income distributions are the Current Population Survey 2013 for the US and the Survey of
Personal Incomes 2011–2012 for the UK.

11parameters, in the random utility model framework introduced by McFadden (1974). Specifically,
we assume that respondents choose the income situation that oﬀers them higher utility. Using
choice data from the income scenarios, we estimate the trade-oﬀs between marginal utility fromown income and that from income of the reference person. The trade-oﬀs are linked to a parameterof the constant relative risk aversion (CRRA)-type utility function V m with which the eﬀects ofincome comparisons, γ, appear as a negative externality of others’ status. V m is given by
(1)

Vm =

(y ȳ γ )1−ρ,
(1 − ρ)where y is own income level and ȳ is income level of others.
The parameter γ reflects the attitude of income comparisons. Jealousy is reflected as γ < 0,and altruism as γ > 0. When γ = 0, there is no income comparison.
The distribution of the relative importance of own and reference person’s income, or equivalentlyγ, is estimated by using the mixed logit model framework (Train 2009). We first estimate theeconomy-wide distribution of γ of all respondents in such a way that the likelihood of observing all
the choice patterns is maximized. Then, the value of γ for each respondent is obtained by finding
the point in the distribution corresponding to each respondent from one’s own choice patterns (i.e.,
Bayesian reverse formula). We repeat this procedure separately before and after the information
treatment. Appendix A2 gives full technical details for the estimation method.
Finally, we document the advantages of our discrete-choice approach over the conventional
approach with subjective evaluation data, where the intensity of income comparison is measured
from a direct question such as “How important is it for you to compare your income with otherpeople’s incomes?”.17 First, there is no straightforward way of making meaningful comparison
across individuals on the basis of subjective evaluation unless respondents share a common rule
for assessment and a common scale (e.g., a score of 3 from one person and a score of 6 fromanother person may represent equivalent feelings between respondents).18 In fact, King et al.
(2004) point out the incomparability of answers to subjective evaluations in inter-country surveys.
Second, many people dislike thinking of themselves as comparison-conscious, and they therefore
underestimate the degree to which they care about others’ income (social-desirability bias). Third,
it is diﬃcult to draw any cardinal inferences from ordinal survey responses to subjective evaluations.
In contrast, because we measure a utility function parameter for each respondent, we can safely
17

See also Solnick and Hemenway (1998), Johansson-Stenman et al. (2002), Alpizar et al. (2005), Carlsson et al.
(2007), Mujcic and Frijters (2013), and Mujcic and Frijters (2015) for studies investigating the intensity of social
comparisons via hypothetical choice questions. Carlsson et al. (2009) conducted discrete-choice experiment on
income-comparisons with repeated choice questions just as the current study, although their interest was not in the
distribution of income-comparison attitudes.
18
See Daly et al. (2013) for a critical view of subjective evaluations, in particular happiness studies.

12compare income-comparison attitudes between respondents, and it is straightforward to draw
cardinal inferences about welfare from our results. One caveat to our approach is that estimationof income-comparison attitudes depends on the specification of our behavioral model. We address
diﬀerent types of utility functions in Section 5.

3

Results from baseline data

3.1

Summary statistics

Table 2 provides summary statistics from the US and UK samples. The questions about individual
characteristics are asked at the beginning of the survey. Columns 1 and 4 of the table show that
average age is 41 for both samples. Both samples over-represent white respondents (at 73% and
90% in the US and the UK, respectively). More than half of respondents are married, and 7.8%
(10.2%) of respondents are immigrants to the US (UK).
We compare these summary statistics with national statistics in terms of age, gender, andeducation. Columns 2 and 5 present the national values, as found by the most recent census in the
US (column 2) and the UK (column 5). We are trying to match the population characteristics byusing stratified random sampling, and we note that the age and gender distributions are similar
to those in the national statistics; this contrasts with many studies that rely on potentially biased
samples from sources such as MTurk. It is rather unfortunate that those in the lowest education
category in both countries are underrepresented in our data, a common issue when using online
surveys, including MTurk (see e.g., Horton et al. 2011; Kuziemko et al. 2015.) To deal with theunderrepresentation of those with lower educational attainments, we reweighted our sample sothat it matches the census across 40 cells for gender (2), age bracket (4), and education categories(5). Columns 3 and 6 show the reweighted sample distribution. In general, reweighting makes
quantitatively little diﬀerence to the analyses presented below. Therefore, we report the unweighted
results throughout this paper (weighted results are available upon request).

3.2

Country diﬀerences in income-comparison attitudes

We first document the country-level diﬀerence in the baseline income-comparison attitudes asmeasured before the information treatment (hereinafter γ0 ). Our approach of using discrete-choicequestions can make a unique contribution to inter-country analysis on income-comparison attitudes
because we do not rely on subjective evaluations in estimating such attitudes. Furthermore, evenfrom subjective evaluation data—a parsimonious method of measuring the intensity of income
comparison—there seems to have been no previous evidence for diﬀerences in the intensity of13

income-comparison attitudes between the US and the UK.
Figure 1 plots the distribution of baseline income-comparison attitude γ0 for the US and the
UK separately. The distribution for the UK is apparently shifted to the left from that of the US,
indicating that the average γ0 for the UK is much lower than that of the US. Recall that higher
values indicate less jealousy. This result suggests that respondents in the UK are more jealousthan those in the US.
We can obtain the same results by regression. In column 1 of Table 3, our measures of incomecomparison attitude γ0 are regressed on the UK dummy, which takes a value of one for respondents
in the UK sample. The intercept is the average value for the US, and the use of the UK dummy
captures the diﬀerence between the US and the UK sample. Column 1 shows that the averages
for γ0 are 0.056 and −0.129 (= −0.185 + 0.056) in the US and the UK, respectively. The value
for the US is close to zero, suggesting that respondents in the US do not care much about others’
income. In contrast, the average γ0 for the UK has an opposite sign and a much larger magnitude,
suggesting that UK respondents are much more jealous than US respondents. The UK dummy of−0.185 is statistically significant at the 1% level. Also a two-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test forequality of distribution functions between the US and the UK sample is rejected at the 1% level.
To examine whether the between-country diﬀerence in income-comparison attitudes is simply
a consequence of sample diﬀerences between the US and the UK, we include individual controls
in addition to the UK dummy. Column 2 in Table 3 shows that the coeﬃcient of the UK dummy
is barely aﬀected, and it is still statistically significant at the 1% level. Notably, other individual
characteristics do not well predict income-comparison attitudes. An exception is ethnicity/race.
Respondents who identify as Asian seem to be more jealous than those who identify as white (whichis the omitted category).19 Column 3 further adds dummies for each comparison benchmark tocontrol for the choice of reference group. The coeﬃcient on the UK dummy is unchanged.20
We also confirm that this US–UK diﬀerence does not stem from diﬀerences in absolute income
levels chosen in the discrete-choice questions across countries. Specifically, we re-estimate γ0 ,replacing the UK income level by the corresponding US income level (e.g. replacing GBP1,000
by USD900, GBP1,500 by USD1,800 and so on); the obtained estimates were quantitatively very
similar (results are available upon request).
These results are consistent with Alesina et al. (2004), who show that Americans do not care
19This result echoes the finding in Yamada and Sato (2013), which examined income-comparison attitudes ofJapanese respondents and obtained γ = −0.458. Nonetheless, caution is needed for the direct comparisons of
this study and Yamada and Sato (2013), as Yamada and Sato (2013) imposed reference persons in the income
comparisons to be solely the average in Japanese society, rather than allowing respondents to choose the comparison
benchmark.
20
The estimate for the UK dummy after excluding respondents who chose family members as their comparison
benchmark is almost identical (−0.185 with p < 0.01).

14

about inequality as much as Europeans do. They suggest the following explanation: compared with
Europeans, Americans may perceive their country as a more mobile society, where people have more
opportunities to move up the income ladder, and so they care less about current inequality level.
Likewise, the Americans may care less about the others’ income if they perceive that social mobility
is high in the US. However, we cannot isolate the role of economic and institutional environments(including social mobility) from cultural determinants across two countries (Luttmer and Singhal
2011; Alesina and Fuchs-Schuendeln 2007) from our data, so this argument is at best speculative.
Also these results may serve as supportive evidence of a well-known endogenous growth modelby Cole et al. (1992) which attributes diﬀerences in the economic growth rates between the US andthe UK, two countries with very similar economic fundamentals, to diﬀerences in social preferences.
It is beyond the scope of this study to understand the underlying causes of diﬀerences in incomecomparison attitudes across two counties, but our study is the first evidence of such US–UK
diﬀerences in income-comparison attitudes as measured in discrete-choice approaches.

4

Results from information treatments

After establishing the between-country diﬀerence in our measures on income-comparison attitude,
we now move onto our second set of results, those on information treatments.

4.1

Balance check

Before presenting the main results, we verify that randomization was correctly performed. One
common check is comparing predetermined individual characteristics across the groups to ensurethat these variables are balanced. Table 4 provides the results of checking for balance, presented
separately for the US and UK samples. The means for each treatment group and the control groupare shown together with the p-values for the null hypothesis that the means are the same acrossthe three groups.
The results show that overall both the US and UK samples are balanced. Out of 32 variables
examined in Table 4, only five variables showed a statistically significant diﬀerence across the groups(p < 0.10).21 Also, it is reassuring that the baseline γ0 is balanced across groups in each country.
In the regression analysis below, some specifications control for these individual characteristics,
but our estimates are barely aﬀected by adding these controls. These results further confirm that
randomization was successful.

21

Note that we define “low-educated” as having educational attainment less than or equal to “some college” inthe US, and less than level 2 qualification in the UK.

15

4.2

Estimation

Since the information treatments are randomized, our econometric model is very straightforward.
We simply estimate the equation′(2)γi = α + β1 T reat1i + β2 T reat2i + Xi π + ϵi ,where γi is the income-comparison attitude of individual i as measured after information treatment.
T reat1i and T reat2i are dummy variables indicating membership in Treatment 1 and Treatment 2,
respectively. These treatment dummies measure the diﬀerences in γ between the treatment groups′

and the control group (which is the omitted category). Xi is a vector of predetermined individual
controls. We always include the baseline γ0 as measured before the information treatment toincrease the precision; this helps because the baseline γ0 is highly correlated with γ as measured
after information treatment.22 In some specifications, we also add individual controls presented inTable 4 to further gain eﬃciency. Since baseline γ0 and individual characteristics are uncorrelatedwith treatment status, inclusion of these variables should not aﬀect our estimates. We also report
the diﬀerence in β1 and β2 with associated standard errors to examine whether the eﬀects of thetwo treatments are diﬀerent.

4.3

Baseline results

Table 5 provides the results for estimating (2) separately for the US and the UK. Odd-numberedcolumns show the estimates without individual controls other than baseline γ0 . Even-numberedcolumns show estimates with individual controls included to increase eﬃciency.23 The estimatesbarely change in both specifications, suggesting that randomization works well. The first twocolumns show results for the US and the next two columns show the results for the UK. Column 1
in Table 5 demonstrates that none of the treatments have much eﬀect on income-comparison attitudes in the US sample. Adding the covariates in column 2 has no eﬀect on the estimated treatmenteﬀects. The magnitudes of the estimates are very small and far from statistically significant, suggesting that neither information treatment has an impact on income-comparison attitudes among
US respondents.
In contrast, columns 3 and 4 show that although Treatment 1 has no impact, Treatment 2 is22

Alternatively, we can take the first diﬀerence of γ before and after the information treatment. We do nottake this approach because the first-diﬀerence approach arbitrarily forces the coeﬃcient on γ0 to be −1. Since thebaseline γ0 is balanced, the results from the first-diﬀerence approach are quantitatively similar (results available
upon request).
23
Specifically, we added age (in years), log income (in USD/GBP), and dummies for gender, ethnicity/race,
marital status, immigrant status, education, employment (unemployed, full-time worker, and chief earner), andparental status.

16

negative and marginally statistically significant (p < 0.10), suggesting that Treatment 2 makes the
UK respondents more jealous. The coeﬃcient of −0.012 on the Treatment 2 dummy translates
into the worsening of income-comparison attitudes by one-tenth of the mean of the control group(−0.127).24 The last two rows in column 4 show that the diﬀerence between the two treatments isonly marginally statistically significant. As shown in Section 4.5, however, the results mask a heterogeneous eﬀect among UK respondents, and a fraction of UK respondents are indeed significantly
influenced by Treatment 2.
Three things are worth mentioning. First, it is interesting that Treatment 1 did not have any
impact on either group. This result suggests that simply showing the observed data on income
and happiness is not suﬃcient to aﬀect attitudes toward income comparison. While the context
is diﬀerent, this result echoes the recent finding of Kuziemko et al. (2015) that displaying datawith a highly skewed income distribution was not suﬃcient to aﬀect preferences for redistribution.
Second, Treatment 2, which adds only two sentences to Treatment 1, aﬀects the income-comparison
attitudes of some UK respondents, but the eﬀect is in an undesired direction. In Section 4.5, we
discuss in more detail why we think Treatment 2 directed those respondents in such a direction.
Third, it is striking that our information treatment makes only UK respondents more jealous, eventhough the UK respondents are already more jealous of others at the baseline than US respondents.
Hence, country diﬀerences lie not just in absolute levels of income-comparison attitudes but also
in responses to external intervention. The US respondents do not appear to care about others’
income at all and thus the information treatment has no impact, while the UK respondents aremuch more malleable. These results are consistent with those of Kuziemko et al. (2015), which
demonstrate that most policy preferences among MTurk respondents in the US are relatively fixed.

4.4

Robustness of UK results

In this subsection we verify the robustness of our results on the UK respondents. The eﬀect ofTreatment 2 is robust to a number of sample selections. Table 6 summarizes the results. To
ease comparisons, column 1 in Table 6 repeats the estimates from column 4 in Table 5. Since
adding controls does not have any appreciable eﬀects on our estimates, we report the estimateswith controls in the rest of the paper.
First, responses from mindless respondents were excluded. Specifically, we excluded observations from those whose time to take the survey was below the 5th percentile or above the 95th.
Column 2 in Table 6 shows that the estimates for Treatment 2 are hardly changed.
24

The reweighted estimates are slightly larger in magnitude. The estimate on the Treatment 2 dummy becomes−0.018 with standard error of 0.008. The diﬀerence between the estimates of Treatment 1 and Treatment 2 becomes−0.017 with standard error of 0.009.

17

Next, we limit the sample to those who correctly answered the verification questions. Whilethe correctness in the verification question is weakly correlated with educational attainment (notshown), our results are robust to such sample selections. Columns 3 and 4 in Table 6 present
the estimates with limiting the sample to those who answer correctly on either the first or second
verification question (88.3% of the UK sample) and to those who answer correctly on the first
verification question (79.2% of the UK sample), respectively. The magnitudes of the estimates are
essentially unchanged, although column 4 for Treatment 2 loses statistical significance due to thesmaller sample size.

4.5

Potential mechanism

Here we aim at understanding a potential mechanism that could explain why Treatment 2 makes
UK respondents more jealous, rather than less, when making income comparisons. Of course, otherexplanations may account for this observation, and we do not view our explanations as definitive.
As mentioned repeatedly, Treatment 1 and Treatment 2 diﬀer by only two sentences. The firstof the two sentences added in Treatment 2 points out people’s tendency to compare their income
with others’, while the second sentence points out the possible negative consequences of suchincome comparisons on welfare. Given our empirical results, we conjecture that our respondents
weighted the first sentence more than the second, and as a result they become more jealous after
Treatment 2. Consequently, our information treatment might have heightened the salience ofincome comparison and ended up directing the focus toward others’ income levels. If this is indeed
the case, we are likely to find larger eﬀects of information treatment among those respondents who
did not care much about income of others before the information treatment.25
We divide the UK sample by the baseline income-comparison attitudes γ0 measured before
the information treatment to shed light on the mechanism behind why the information treatment
guided UK respondents in an undesirable direction.26 Consistent with our conjecture, columns 1
and 2 in Table 7 show that our results on Treatment 2 are mostly driven by those who did notinitially care about others’ incomes. While the estimated eﬀect of Treatment 2 among those who are
initially more jealous (baseline γ0 is below median) is −0.004 and far from statistically significant,the same estimate among those who are initially less jealous (baseline γ0 is above median) is −0.020
and significant ( p < 0.05). The latter estimate is large and corresponds to a roughly 20% change
25

We also examined heterogeneous eﬀects among the UK respondents on other dimensions such as gender, educational attainments, and age. We did not observe systematic diﬀerences in the eﬀects of treatment along these
dimensions. We also investigated diﬀerential eﬀects by choice of comparison benchmark, but obtained no meaningful diﬀerences, partly due to the smaller sample size once we stratified the sample by comparison benchmark (allresults available upon request).
26
We replicate the same exercise for the US respondents. We do not find any eﬀects even after dividing the US
sample by γ0 .

18

in income-comparison attitudes from the control mean. Our information treatment thus ends up
making those who initially pay less attention to others’ income levels become more comparisonconscious. Unfortunately, the diﬀerence between the two estimates is not statistically significant
at the conventional level (χ2 (1) = 1.62, p = 0.203), and thus we cannot exclude the possibility
that the two estimates are the same.
In sum, our findings suggest that income-comparison attitudes are relatively stable, but there
is some scope for governmental intervention to aﬀect such attitudes in certain population groups(e.g., people who are initially less jealous).

5

Supplemental analyses

We established our main results on the baseline diﬀerences of income-comparison attitudes between
the US and the UK in Section 3, and the diﬀerential responses to information intervention in
Section 4. Here, we further present supplemental results considering diﬀerent types of behavioral
models.
As Duesenberry (1949) documented, comparison attitudes can diﬀer depending on whether the
person’s relative position is above or below a reference point. Fehr and Schmidt (1999) consider
such eﬀects in a game-theoretic situation, constructing the egalitarian model. The utility functionin this case should readU = y − A max{ȳ − y, 0} − B max{y − ȳ, 0},
where B < A and 0 < B < 1. The parameter A stands for envy, while B is for the emotion of
guilt. While our experimental setting is not designed to estimate parameters of such behavioral
models, our setting indeed allows researchers to do so.27
Before applying this behavior model to our data, some remarks on the following supplemental
analyses are in order. First, information shown to the respondents in our discrete-choice questions
do not directly match with Fehr and Schmidt (1999), because the respondents need to calculate
diﬀerences between y and ȳ. Second, we lose orthogonality in variations of choice questions sinceorthogonality is maintained based on y and ȳ rather than y − ȳ.
27Another candidate for a utility function, not examined here, is the Stone–Geary type, where U SG = U SG (y −S, ȳ − S). The idea is that the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between own income levels and income of others
can diﬀer depending on the subsistence level S. It is not, however, technically possible to estimate diﬀerential
MRSs depending on subsistence levels via the mixed logit model. This is because in the mixed logit model when
we subtract some value (S) from the attributes, the coeﬃcients obtained from the random utility model become
the same as when original figures of attributes are used for the estimation. Hence, while it is intriguing to consider
subsistence levels along with income comparisons, we need a diﬀerent experimental setting, such as one extended
to allow for diﬀerent levels of S, to estimate the utility function.

19

Finally and most importantly, under the egalitarian model, we cannot directly compare A and
B derived from mixed logit models across diﬀerent sample pools (e.g., US vs. UK). This is a
crucial flaw for our main purpose of cross-country analyses. Technically, the estimates from themixed logit models are divided by scale parameters, which are diﬀerent between the US and theUK. Since these scale parameters are unknown to researchers, we cannot compare the eﬀects ofjealousy and the sense of guilty between the countries. In contrast, we can obtain true estimatesof γ in our behavioral model, because scale parameters in the numerator and denominator cancel
when obtaining γ (see, for example, Train (2009) and footnote 17 of Yamada and Sato (2013) for
more details on this point).
Nonetheless, we estimated the egalitarian model for each country. In both the US and the UK,
we find that A > 0 and B > 0, as the theory presumes. However, we find that A < B, which
contradicts the prediction of the egalitarian model (results available upon request).
Secondly, asymmetrical eﬀects of income comparisons by income positions could apply not only
to the baseline estimation as above, but also to the responses to information treatment. Given
the significant responses of UK respondents to the information treatment, we examine whether
the eﬀects among the UK respondents diﬀer by perception of relative position of their own incomein the society. In our survey, before discrete-choice questions, we ask respondents to provide thelevel of own income (ysurvey ), as well as the level of expected income of the comparison benchmark(ȳsurvey ). Note that these variables are for the real world, not for the hypothetical situations in
the experiment.
We divide the sample into three subgroups: own income is lower than that of comparison benchmarks (ysurvey < ȳsurvey ), own income is higher than that of comparison benchmarks(ysurvey > ȳsurvey ), and own income is the same level as that of the comparison benchmarks(ysurvey = ȳsurvey ). Table 8 shows the results for reapplication of Equation (2) to each subgroup.
We should view these results with considerable caution, because while ysurvey and ȳsurvey are collected before information treatment, both are reported by the respondents themselves, and thus
are potentially endogenous to our outcomes.28
Interestingly, columns 1, 3, and 4 in Table 8 indicate that our results are driven mainly by those
who stated that their own income levels are greater than those of their comparison benchmarks(column 4). Importantly, we control for own income in all the specifications. This result suggeststhat while their perceived higher income position initially makes them relatively indiﬀerent toothers’ income, information intervention directs them to be more conscious of others’ income. In
28

Instead of using ȳsurvey as reported by respondents themselves as reference income, another candidate for thereference income can be the average income of individuals in same regions, which some other studies use (e.g.,
Luttmer 2005). However, Table 2 shows that only 1.2% of respondents in the UK choose neighbor as the referencegroup in our study. Of course, this fraction may be a lower bound since the reference groups in other categories
such as close friends could also be neighbors.

20

fact, as shown in third-to-last row in Table 8, the control mean of γ0 among those who think they
are in the higher-income position (−0.111) is smaller (i.e., less jealous) than both those who thinkthey are in the lower-income position (−0.124) and those who stated the same income as others(−0.137).29
We further investigate the suggestion by Ferrer-i Carbonell (2005) regarding the importance of
not only the relative position of one’s income to others, but also the distance between own income
and that of others. Specifically, for each subgroup, we estimate the following specification, which
is a variant of the main specification (2):′γi =α + β1 T reat1i + β2 T reat2i + Xi π
(3)

+ θ1 {T reat1i × abs(ln ysurvey − ln ȳsurvey )} + θ2 {T reat2i × abs(ln ysurvey − ln ȳsurvey )} + ϵi .

Here, we add the interactions of each treatment to the diﬀerence between ln ysurvey and ln ȳsurvey .
Interestingly, column 5 shows that Treatment 2 makes those who are initially in the superior
income position (ysurvey > ȳsurvey ) more comparison-conscious as the distance between own income
and that of others becomes greater (i.e., running away from the Jones). Column 2 shows that sucha pattern is not observed among those whose stated income is lower than that of the comparison
benchmark.

6

Conclusion

Economists have long been concerned that negative attitudes toward relative income may reducesocial welfare. This paper investigates whether we can alter such income-comparison attitudes by
providing simple but intuitive information pointing out the potential harm of being comparisonconscious. To this end, we conduct an original randomized online survey experiment in the US andthe UK. First, we find that UK respondents compare their incomes with others’ more intensely
than US respondents do. Second, we find that providing information on income comparisons makesa certain group of UK respondents even more jealous, but we do not find a similar eﬀect on US
respondents or other UK respondents. Our findings suggest that income-comparison attitudes are
relatively stable, but also that there is some scope for governmental intervention to aﬀect such
attitudes among at least some population segments. However, our respondents are guided in a
direction of decreased welfare, implying that changing these attitudes in a desired direction by a
29

The empirical evidence on the direction of income comparison is mixed. While Ferrer-i Carbonell (2005) finds
evidence that income comparison is upward looking, McBride (2001) finds evidence that it is the other way around.
Our evidence is more consistent with that of Ferrer-i Carbonell (2005), since those whose income was lower thanothers tended to compare more (upward) than those whose income was higher than others (downward).

21

simple message may be diﬃcult.
There are some limitations to our study. First, we cannot examine the lasting eﬀect of our
information treatment due to data limitations. It is possible that such information treatment canalter income-comparison attitudes in the short term only. A few papers have tested the duration of eﬀects from informational survey experiments, but the evidence is mixed. For example,
Druckman and Nelson (2003) find that their results disappear within ten days after the information treatment, while Kuziemko et al. (2015) find that their eﬀects last one month. Second, although our study indicates the possibility that government can probably aﬀect income-comparison
attitudes, we cannot show how to direct income-comparison attitudes in a desired way. Providing more direct and stronger information—stressing that making income comparisons is, indeed,
problematic—could be more eﬀective than our information treatment. These questions leave roomfor future research.

22

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27

Figure 1: Information treatment for treatment group 1 (US case)Note: For the UK case, the US figures in USD are changed to the UK figures in GBP, and all
the terms “United States” in the sentences are changed to “United Kingdom”.

28

Figure 2: Snapshot of a discrete-choice question (the US case)Note: For the UK, the figures are in GBP and come from actual income distribution in the
UK. On top of this question, the comparison benchmark (i.e., who to compare with) chosen byeach respondent is shown with the aim of making the comparison more realistic. In this example,“family members” is chosen as a comparison benchmark group.

29

Figure 3: Distribution of γ0 (baseline)

Note: The bin size is 0.05 in both graphs. The vertical line corresponds to a value of zero.
The total sample size is 4,587 for the US and 4,500 for the UK. For the US, the mean, standard
deviation, minimum, and maximum are 0.056, 0.146, −1.019, and 0.965, respectively. For the UK,
the corresponding values are −0.129, 0.126, −0.974, and 0.737, respectively. See Section 2.3 andAppendix A2 for a description of how we estimate the distribution of parameter γ.

30

31

Observations
Percentage

Observations
Percentage

Observations
Percentage

Observations
Percentage

52
1.20%

109
2.40%

765
17.00%

687
15.00%

201
4.50%
Average people in the US/UK

173
3.80%

Classmates of yourschool days

100
2.20%

102
2.20%

689
15.30%
Friend or acquaintance544
11.90%

Close friends

47
1.00%

52
1.10%

395
8.80%
Others540
11.80%

Family members

139
3.10%

227
4.90%

27
0.60%
Don’t know

14
0.30%

Family members of yourchildren’s classmates

1,195
26.60%

1,336
29.10%

890
19.80%
Don’t compare

803
17.50%

Work colleagues

Note: The comparison benchmark is the reference group with whom each respondent compares their income. The exact question in the survey is “Whose
income would you be most likely to compare your own with? Please choose one of the groups”. Total sample size is 4,587 for the US and 4,500 for the UK.

UK

US

UK

US

Neighbor

Table 1: Comparison benchmark

Table 2: Summary Statistics

VariableMale
Age (in years)
Age (<24)
Age (25–34)
Age (35–49)
Age (50–64)
Educ 1
Educ 2
Educ 3
Educ 4
Educ 5White
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Other race
MarriedImmigrant
Unemployed
Full-time worker
Chief earner
Have kids
Log income (USD/GBP)
Observations

No weight(1)
0.521
41.423(13.013)
0.118
0.240
0.318
0.324
0.029
0.236
0.404
0.230
0.101
0.733
0.097
0.099
0.044
0.028
0.510
0.078
0.118
0.409
0.616
0.571
10.259(0.975)
4,587

US
Census
(2)
0.495

0.153
0.215
0.330
0.300
0.123
0.300
0.295
0.190
0.092

-

Weight(3)
0.495
41.474(12.789)
0.115
0.225
0.346
0.314
0.120
0.300
0.289
0.195
0.096
0.727
0.098
0.113
0.036
0.027
0.513
0.079
0.145
0.373
0.592
0.591
10.161(0.989)4,587

No weight(4)
0.496
41.051(12.722)
0.114
0.242
0.346
0.298
0.067
0.104
0.202
0.263
0.365
0.900
0.022
0.002
0.052
0.024
0.614
0.102
0.085
0.423
0.585
0.599
10.109(0.915)4,500

UK
Census
(5)
0.483

0.188
0.208
0.332
0.271
0.164
0.165
0.187
0.158
0.324

-

Weight(6)
0.482
41.277(12.717)
0.115
0.227
0.362
0.296
0.169
0.164
0.179
0.148
0.341
0.898
0.022
0.002
0.048
0.031
0.623
0.097
0.101
0.400
0.566
0.616
10.058(0.913)4,500

Note: All figures, except for age (in years) and log income (in USD/GBP), are percentages for each category.
Educ 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 correspond to “Less than high school graduate”, “High school graduate”, “Some college orassociate’s degree”, “Bachelor’s degree”, and “ Advanced degree” in the US. In the UK, Educ 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
correspond to “No qualifications”, “Level 1 qualifications”, “Level 2 qualifications”, “Level 3 qualifications”, and“Level 4 qualifications and above”, respectively.

32

Table 3: Individual characteristics and γ0 (baseline)
Outcome: γ0 (baseline)UK(1)-0.185***(0.003)Male
Age (in years)
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Other race
MarriedImmigrants
Low educated
Unemployed
Fulltime worker
Chief earner
Have kids
Log income (USD/GBP)
Constant
Control for comparison benchmark
R-squareObservations

0.056***(0.002)
No
0.316
9,087

(2)
-0.186***(0.003)0.005(0.003)-0.000(0.000)-0.009(0.006)-0.008(0.007)-0.023***(0.007)0.015(0.009)0.002(0.003)0.006(0.006)0.002(0.003)-0.002(0.005)-0.004(0.004)-0.002(0.004)-0.006*(0.003)-0.000(0.002)0.064***(0.019)
No
0.317
9,087

(3)
-0.186***(0.003)0.005*(0.003)0.000(0.000)-0.009(0.006)-0.009(0.007)-0.023***(0.007)0.016*(0.009)0.002(0.003)0.006(0.006)0.002(0.003)-0.002(0.005)-0.003(0.004)-0.002(0.004)-0.006*(0.003)-0.000(0.002)0.033(0.022)
Yes
0.320
9,087

Note: All explanatory variables, except for age (in years) and log income (in USD/GBP), are dummy variables.
The reference group for race is white. “Low educated” is less than or equal to “some college or associate’s degree”
in the US, and less than or equal to “level 2 qualifications” in the UK. Significance levels are ∗p < 0.10,∗ ∗ p < 0.05, and ∗ ∗ ∗p < 0.01.

33

34

(2)
0.061
(0.146)0.523(0.500)41.599(12.964)0.741(0.438)0.098(0.298)0.103(0.304)0.034(0.182)0.015(0.121)0.518(0.500)0.071(0.258)0.666(0.472)0.134(0.341)0.406(0.491)0.608(0.488)0.574(0.495)10.267(0.977)
1,555

(1)
0.050
(0.153)0.515(0.500)41.394(13.035)
0.723(0.448)0.099(0.298)0.096(0.295)0.051(0.220)0.025(0.156)0.511(0.500)0.077(0.266)0.689(0.463)0.103(0.304)0.403(0.491)0.618(0.486)0.577(0.494)10.259(0.953)
1,488

(3)
0.056
(0.139)0.525(0.500)41.274(13.048)0.733(0.443)0.095(0.293)0.098(0.297)0.046(0.210)0.021(0.143)0.502(0.500)0.086(0.281)0.653(0.476)0.115(0.319)0.418(0.493)0.623(0.485)0.561(0.496)
10.252(0.995)
1,544

Control

0.914

0.630

0.673

0.659

0.028**

0.530

0.300

0.678

0.137

0.061*

0.807

0.909

0.520

0.781

0.860

p-value(equality of
all groups)
(4)
0.106
(5)
-0.131(0.124)0.501(0.500)41.013(12.473)
0.916(0.278)0.015(0.123)0.003(0.052)0.045(0.208)0.021(0.142)0.615(0.487)
0.099(0.299)0.366(0.482)0.088(0.284)0.429(0.495)0.604(0.489)0.612(0.487)
10.116(0.947)
1,498

Treatment 1(6)-0.127(0.130)0.502(0.500)41.192(12.906)
0.892(0.310)0.028(0.164)
0.000
0.000
0.054
(0.226)0.026(0.160)0.613(0.487)0.095(0.293)0.381(0.486)0.083(0.276)0.415(0.493)0.582(0.493)0.583(0.493)10.086(0.901)
1,487

UK
Treatment 2(7)-0.131(0.123)0.484(0.500)40.950(12.792)
0.890(0.312)0.023(0.150)0.005(0.068)0.057(0.233)0.024(0.154)0.614(0.487)0.112(0.315)0.371(0.483)0.083(0.276)0.424(0.494)0.568(0.495)0.601(0.490)10.125(0.897)
1,515

Control

0.470

0.261

0.131

0.723

0.841

0.717

0.294

0.992

0.599

0.314

0.037**

0.070*

0.036**

0.865

0.545

p-value(equality of
all groups)
(8)
0.651

Note: Columns (4) and (8) provide the p-values of the joint test of equality. See Table 3 for abbreviations. Significance levels are ∗p < 0.10, ∗ ∗ p < 0.05,
and ∗ ∗ ∗p < 0.01.

Observations

Log income (USD/GBP)

ParentChief earner

Full-time worker

Unemployed

Low educatedImmigrant

Married

Other race

Asian

Hispanic

Black

White

Age (in years)Male

γ0 (baseline)

US
Treatment 2

Treatment 1

Table 4: Sample balance across treatments

Table 5: Baseline results

Outcome: γTreatment1
Treatment2
Controls
Control meanR-squareObservations
Treatment1 – Treatment2

US
(1)
(2)
0.001
0.001
(0.006) (0.006)-0.003-0.003(0.006) (0.006)
No
Yes
0.025
0.025
0.001
0.005
4,587
4,587
-0.004-0.005(0.006) (0.006)

UK
(3)
(4)
-0.001-0.001(0.007) (0.007)-0.012* -0.012*(0.007) (0.007)
NoYes-0.127-0.127
0.003
0.008
4,500
4,500
-0.011 -0.011*(0.007) (0.007)

Note: Standard errors are reported in parentheses. All regressions control for baseline γ0 , even those labeled asincluding “no” controls. Controls for covariates further include age (in years), log income (USD/GBP), anddummies for gender, ethnicity/race, marital status, immigrant status, education, employment (unemployed,
full-time worker, and chief earner), and parental status. Control mean is the mean value of γ for the control
group. The last two rows report the diﬀerence between the estimates of Treatment 1 and Treatment 2, with thestandard errors in parentheses. Significance levels are ∗p < 0.10, ∗ ∗ p < 0.05, and ∗ ∗ ∗p < 0.01.

35

Table 6: Robustness checks (UK sample)

Outcome: γTreatment1
Treatment2
Controls
Control meanR-squareObservations
Treatment1 – Treatment2

Baseline (whole sample)(1)-0.001(0.007)-0.012*(0.007)
Yes-0.1270.008
4,500-0.011*(0.007)Time(2)-0.002(0.007)-0.012*(0.007)
Yes-0.1270.007
4,088-0.010(0.007)

Quiz 1(3)
0.002(0.007)-0.012*(0.007)
Yes-0.1270.010
3,974-0.014**(0.007)

Quiz 2(4)
0.007(0.007)-0.010(0.007)
Yes-0.1270.015
3,567-0.018**(0.007)

Note: Standard errors are reported in parentheses. See Table 5 for a list of controls. Control mean is the meanvalue of γ for the control group. The last two rows report the diﬀerence between the estimates of Treatment 1 andTreatment 2, with the corresponding standard errors in parentheses. Column (2) (Time) excludes observations
whose duration time is below the 5th percentile or above the 95th. Columns (3) (Quiz 1 ) and (4) (Quiz 2 ) limit
the sample to those who correctly answered either the first or second verification questions (88.3% of the sample)
and those who correctly answered the first verification question (79.2% of the sample). Significance levels are∗p < 0.10, ∗ ∗ p < 0.05, and ∗ ∗ ∗p < 0.01.

36

Table 7: By Baseline γ0 (UK sample)

Outcome: γTreatment1
Treatment2
Controls
Control meanR-squareObservations

By baseline γ0
Below median (more jealous) Above median (less jealous)
(1)
(2)
0.003
-0.005(0.009)(0.010)-0.004-0.020**(0.009)(0.010)Yes
Yes-0.151-0.102
0.013
0.014
2,250
2,250

Note: Standard errors are reported in parentheses. See Table 5 for a list of controls. Control mean is the meanvalue of γ for the control group. Note that the lower the baseline γ0 , the more jealous the respondent initially is.
Significance levels are ∗p < 0.10, ∗ ∗ p < 0.05, and ∗ ∗ ∗p < 0.01.

37

Table 8: Own vs. others’ income (UK sample)

Treatment1
Treatment2
Treatment1 ×(ln ysurvey − ln ȳsurvey )Treatment2 ×(ln ysurvey − ln ȳsurvey )Control meanR-squaredN

ysurvey < ȳsurvey
(1)
(2)
0.004
-0.008(0.009) (0.013)-0.009-0.010(0.009) (0.013)-0.012(0.010)-0.002(0.010)-0.124-0.124
0.017
0.018
2,417
2,405

Own vs. others’ income
ysurvey = ȳsurvey
ysurvey > ȳsurvey
(3)
(4)
(5)
-0.004-0.022-0.031(0.011)(0.021)(0.028)-0.008-0.037*0.014(0.011)(0.021)(0.028)0.016(0.034)-0.099***(0.036)-0.137-0.111-0.111
0.010
0.038
0.054
1,598
485
485

Note: ysurvey is own income, and ȳsurvey is the respondents’ expectation of income for their comparison
benchmark. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. See Table 5 for a list of controls. Control mean is themean value of γ for the control group. Significance levels are ∗p < 0.10, ∗ ∗ p < 0.05, and ∗ ∗ ∗p < 0.01.

38

Appendicies (not for publication)
A1

Flow chart of questionnaire

The structure and the flow of the experiment are as follows:
1. Background socioeconomic questions including age, gender, race, education, income, andemployment status
2. Initial discrete-choice questions, to measure baseline income-comparison attitudes before
information treatment
3. Randomized treatment by providing information on income and happiness to the treatmentgroup and unrelated information to a control group (as shown in Figure A1)
4. Follow-up discrete-choice questions, to measure income-comparison attitudes after information treatment

1

A2

Technical Appendix

A2.1

Construction of hypothetical discrete-choice questionsFirst, we explain how we construct our discrete-choice questions. Five attribute levels are set
considering monthly income distributions in the US and the UK. Two attributes (own income andreference income) and five possible income levels for each attribute provide 25 potential variationsin the income-situation scenario. In the literature of choice experiments, these scenarios are called
alternatives.
Researchers have to make their own choices about which alternatives to use in survey questions
and which to discard. Following Louviere et al. (2000), we conduct orthogonal planning in choosing the alternatives to be used in choice questions. This method eﬀectively pairs multi-dimensionaland multiple-level attributes in alternatives, and provides an experimental plan with the greatest
amount of information using the least number of observations. Further, by employing orthogonalplanning we can avoid multicollinearity problems in regressions of the random utility model (explained later), because the independent variables in the regressions become orthogonal. We use
SPSS Conjoint (ver. 20.0) for orthogonal design of alternatives in this study.
Next, we construct choice sets consisting of pairs of alternatives and the no-choice option.
According to the requirements of orthogonal design, we generate two alternative vectors, eachof which consists of 25 pairs of own income levels and reference income levels.1 Finally, choicesets with a no-choice option are created by pairing alternatives, one taken from one alternative
vector and the other from the other alternative vector. The pairing strategy is at the discretion of
the researchers, but all variations must be exploited and same alternatives cannot be used twice.
Because orthogonality in the alternative matrix is maintained for each row permutation, we canarbitrarily pair alternatives to meet the requirement.
As documented in Huber and Zwerina (1996) and Viscusi et al. (2008), it is ideal if the choice
design can be paired so as to balance the utility of each alternative. One diﬃculty in choice
experiments of income comparisons, however, is that an increase (decrease) in a reference group’s
income does not necessarily mean that there is a decrease (increase) in one’s own utility level; assuch, we do not exclude the possibility of altruistic preference. Given these constraints, our best
strategy for pairing alternatives is as follows.
Suppose the scenario Z = (x, y), where x denotes the level of one’s own income and y is others’
income. Then, qualitatively, candidates for paired scenarios consist of the following eight variations: (x, y+), (x, y−), (x+, y), (x+, y+), (x+, y−), (x−, y+), (x−, y), and (x−, y−), where x+
1

As such 25 alternatives out of 25 potential variations had to be used to meet the requirement of orthogonal
design.

2means some value greater than x and x− means some value smaller than x. Since we do not
exclude the possibility of altruism, there are no a priori dominant choices for Z from these eight
alternatives. We then make pairs such that these eight situations appear as evenly as possible. Using the procedures discussed here, we are able to eﬃciently obtain parameter estimates. Appendix
Table A1 shows the set of questions we use in the survey. Each respondent answers 12 randomly
assigned questions (6 questions before information treatment and 6 after information treatment)out of the 25 possible questions.

A2.2

Random utility model and empirical method

Here, we introduce the econometric foundation of how respondents’ choice data can be used toestimate the sign of coeﬃcients and intensity of income comparisons. To analyze decisions inhypothetical choice experiments, we use a random utility model framework. It is assumed that
respondents choose an income situation because they obtain higher utility from that situation thanfrom the other available situations. When there are two situations (A and B, for example as in thisstudy), and if they choose A rather than B, then the choice data is recorded as 1 for A and 0 for
B, along with the levels of the explanatory variables (own income level and reference income level,in this study). These pieces of information constitute the observation for regression analyses.
Now, we assume N respondents who answer T (≥ 1) repeated questions. The utility of respondent n when choosing situation i at question t ∈ T , Uitn consists of observable components ofthe explanatory variables Vitn and unobservable components ϵitn , so that utility can be viewed as
Uitn = Vitn + ϵitn . Utilities from observable components are assumed to be linear combinations∑Kof each variable as Vitn =k=1 βk Xik , where k = 1, · · · , K(K ≥ 2) represents the variety of
explanatory variable, Xk denotes the levels of the kth explanatory variables, and βk measures themarginal utility of each variable. In the following analysis, the vector β ≡ (β1 , · · · , βK ) that maximizes the log-likelihood function of observed choice patterns by the respondent is the estimatorfor mixed logit model regressions. Following McFadden (1974), ϵitn is distributed according to anindependent and identical distribution of extreme value type 1 (IIDEV1) with variance σ 2 .
The logit formula of choice probability Pitn for respondent n choosing situation i from the setof situations St (the choice set) in question t ∈ T can be written as
Pitn = prob(Uitn > Ujtn , ∀j ̸= i ∈ St ) = prob(ϵjtn − ϵitn < Vitn − Vjtn , ∀j ̸= i ∈ St ).
McFadden (1974) shows that Pitn = exp(λVitn )/∑√j∈S exp(λVjtn ), where λ = π/

6σ is a scaleparameter.
Finally, a dummy variable ditn is defined, taking a value of 1 if respondent n chooses situation3

i for question t ∈ T , and 0 otherwise. Together with the logit formula of choice probability Pitn ,the log-likelihood function of repeated choices observed in experiments can be written as
LL(β) =∑∑∑
ntditn ln Pitn .

i∈St

In this paper, we consider a case where the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) does nothold.2 We then obtain distributions f (βi ) of some parameters in β across respondents by thefollowing method. We specify that f (β) is a normal distribution function with its parameter set
ML
as θ, following Train (2009). The choice probability function Pitn
for the mixed logit model can∫be written as
ML
Pitn
=

Pitn (β)f (β|θ)dβ,

where Pitn is the logit choice probability in the conditional logit model given β. The value of θ
can be obtained via simulation to maximize the simulated log likelihood function3
SLL(θ) =

∑∑∑
n

t

ML
ditn ln Pitn.

i∈St

In our study, we consider the case where K = 2 and individuals derive utility not only from theirown income X1 = y but also from the income of those in the comparison benchmark X2 = ȳ. From
textbook assumptions, we suppose that respondents value attribute y positively. With a linear
utility function of the random utility model, experimental respondents derive utility according to(1)

V = β1 y + β2 ȳ,

where the ratio of marginal utility from ȳ to that from y, β2 /β1 , captures the trade-oﬀs between
own and reference group income.
Using maximum-likelihood estimation, we obtain point estimates for β1 and the distributionof β2 .4 The individual coeﬃcient of β2,i can be obtained by applying the inverse Bayesian formula
to the estimated distribution of the coeﬃcient and the choice pattern of the individual respondent(Train 2009). Finally, we obtain individual trade-oﬀ between own and reference group income by
dividing the individual coeﬃcient of β2,i by the average eﬀect of β1 .
Now we relate the ratio of β2 /β1 to macroeconomics theory. Following Abel (1990), Gali (1994),2

We assume that the error term is independently and identically distributed, as in the conditional logit model.
See Section 6 of Train (2009) for details.
4
See Revelt and Train (1998) for details on this procedure.

34and Dupor and Liu (2003), consider the constant relative risk-aversion-type utility function as
(2)

Vm =

(y ȳ γ )1−ρ,
(1 − ρ)where ρ > 0 and the parameter γ regulates the intensity and sign of income-comparisons. If γ < 0,then the individual has jealousy. If γ > 0, then the individual has an altruistic preference, whereas
if γ = 0, there is no income comparison. With this utility function, the ratio of marginal utility
from the reference income and that from own income becomes(3)∂V m /∂ ȳy=γ .
m∂V /∂yȳHence, the ratio of marginal utility, β2 /β1 , as obtained in the random utility framework corresponds
to a parameter γ of the constant relative risk-aversion-type utility function in the economy ofsymmetric equilibrium where y = ȳ.

5Figure A1: Information treatment for control group (US case)6

Table A1: Choice sets for discrete income choice questions

Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q5
Q6
Q7
Q8
Q9
Q 10
Q 11
Q 12
Q 13
Q 14
Q 15
Q 16
Q 17
Q 18
Q 19
Q 20
Q 21
Q 22
Q 23
Q 24
Q 25

Situation 1
Own income Ref. income
4
3
5
5
5
4
5
1
5
3
5
2
2
3
4
4
3
3
4
2
3
2
4
1
3
5
4
5
1
4
2
5
2
1
1
5
2
2
1
2
1
3
3
4
3
1
1
1
2
4

Situation 2
Own income Ref. income
3
1
3
5
4
5
5
3
5
4
5
1
4
4
5
2
4
3
1
1
2
2
3
2
3
4
5
5
2
3
1
4
4
2
3
3
4
1
2
5
1
2
2
4
1
5
1
3
2
1

Note: 1 = USD900 (GBP1,000), 2 = USD1,800 (GBP1,500), 3 = USD2,900 (GBP2,000), 4 = USD4,900(GBP3,000), and 5 = USD7,200 (GBP4,000). Each respondent answers 12 randomly assigned questions (6questions before information treatment and 6 after information treatment) out of the 25 possible questions.

7

References
Abel, A. B., “Asset Prices under Habit Formation and Catching Up with the Joneses,” American
Economic Review 80 (May 1990), 38–42.
Dupor, B. and W.-F. Liu, “Jealousy and Equilibrium Overconsumption,” American Economic
Review 93 (March 2003), 423–428.
Gali, J., “Keeping Up with the Joneses: Consumption Externalities, Portfolio Choice, and Asset
Prices,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 26 (February 1994), 1–8.
Huber, J. and K. Zwerina, “The importance of utility balance in eﬃcient choice designs,”
Journal of Marketing Research 33 (1996), 307–317.
Louviere, J. J., D. A. Hensher and J. D. Swait, Stated Choice Methods: Analysis andApplications (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
McFadden, D., Conditional Logit Analysis of Qualitative Choice Behavior in P. Zarembka (ed.)
Frontiers in Econometrics (Academic Press, 1974).
Revelt, D. and K. Train, “Mixed Logit With Repeated Choices: Households’ Choices Of
Appliance Eﬃciency Level,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 80 (November 1998), 647–
657.
Train, K., Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2009).
Viscusi, W. K., J. Huber and J. Bell, “Estimating discount rates for environmental quality
from utility-based choice experiments,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 37 (2008), 199–220.

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