[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc17/168133.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Embedding Effects in the OECD Better Life Index

Author

Listed:
  • von Reumont, Louisa
  • Schöb, Ronnie
  • Hetschko, Clemens
Abstract
The OECD aims to foster ‘better policies for better lives'. To this end, the OECD invites people to evaluate quality-of-life indicators according to their individual preferences, using the web-based Better Life Index. These indicators are embedded in 11 broader well-being dimensions. Our experiment shows that this procedure yields strong embedding effects, casting serious doubts on the reliability of the Better Life Index as well as its usefulness in providing meaningful policy recommendations.

Suggested Citation

  • von Reumont, Louisa & Schöb, Ronnie & Hetschko, Clemens, 2017. "Embedding Effects in the OECD Better Life Index," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168133, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168133
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/168133/1/VfS-2017-pid-2570.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hideyuki Mizobuchi, 2014. "Measuring World Better Life Frontier: A Composite Indicator for OECD Better Life Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 118(3), pages 987-1007, September.
    2. Kahnemant, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L., 1992. "Contingent valuation and the value of public goods: Reply," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 90-94, January.
    3. Catherine L. Kling & Daniel J. Phaneuf & Jinhua Zhao, 2012. "From Exxon to BP: Has Some Number Become Better Than No Number?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(4), pages 3-26, Fall.
    4. Loomis John & Lockwood Michael & DeLacy Terry, 1993. "Some Empirical Evidence on Embedding Effects in Contingent Valuation of Forest Protection," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 45-55, July.
    5. Romina Boarini & Marco Mira D'Ercole, 2013. "Going beyond GDP: An OECD Perspective," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 34, pages 289-314, September.
    6. Martine Durand, 2015. "The OECD Better Life Initiative: How's Life? and the Measurement of Well-Being," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(1), pages 4-17, March.
    7. Smith, V. Kerry, 1992. "Arbitrary values, good causes, and premature verdicts," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 71-89, January.
    8. J�rôme Kasparian & Antoine Rolland, 2012. "OECD's ‘Better Life Index’: can any country be well ranked?," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(10), pages 2223-2230, June.
    9. Clark, Andrew E., 2001. "What really matters in a job? Hedonic measurement using quit data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 223-242, May.
    10. Peter A. Diamond & Jerry A. Hausman, 1994. "Contingent Valuation: Is Some Number Better than No Number?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 45-64, Fall.
    11. W. Michael Hanemann, 1994. "Valuing the Environment through Contingent Valuation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 19-43, Fall.
    12. Jerry Hausman, 2012. "Contingent Valuation: From Dubious to Hopeless," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(4), pages 43-56, Fall.
    13. Diane Coyle, 2014. "GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10183.
    14. McDaniels, Timothy L. & Gregory, Robin & Arvai, Joseph & Chuenpagdee, Ratana, 2003. "Decision structuring to alleviate embedding in environmental valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 33-46, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tahsin Mehdi, 2019. "Stochastic Dominance Approach to OECD’s Better Life Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 917-954, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Clemens Hetschko & Louisa von Reumont & Ronnie Schöb, 2019. "Embedding as a pitfall for survey‐based welfare indicators: evidence from an experiment," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 182(2), pages 517-539, February.
    2. Whitehead, John C., 2016. "Plausible responsiveness to scope in contingent valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 17-22.
    3. John C. Whitehead & Timothy C. Haab & Ju‐Chin Huang, 1998. "Part‐Whole Bias in Contingent Valuation: Will Scope Effects Be Detected with Inexpensive Survey Methods?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 160-168, July.
    4. Powe, N. A. & Bateman, I. J., 2003. "Ordering effects in nested 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' contingent valuation designs," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 255-270, June.
    5. Cook, David & Davíðsdóttir, Brynhildur & Kristófersson, Daði Már, 2016. "Energy projects in Iceland – Advancing the case for the use of economic valuation techniques to evaluate environmental impacts," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 104-113.
    6. Caffey, Rex H. & Wang, Hua & Petrolia, Daniel R., 2014. "Trajectory economics: Assessing the flow of ecosystem services from coastal restoration," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 74-84.
    7. John C. Whitehead, 2024. "They doth protest too much, methinks: Reply to “Reply to Whitehead”," Working Papers 24-04, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    8. Timothy C. Haab & Matthew G. Interis & Daniel R. Petrolia & John C. Whitehead, 2013. "From Hopeless to Curious? Thoughts on Hausman's 'Dubious to Hopeless' Critique of Contingent Valuation," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 35(4), pages 593-612.
    9. Koen Decancq, 2017. "Measuring Multidimensional Inequality in the OECD Member Countries with a Distribution-Sensitive Better Life Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 1057-1086, April.
    10. Daniel A. Brent & Lata Gangadharan & Anke Leroux & Paul A. Raschky, 2016. "Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is," Monash Economics Working Papers 42-16, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    11. Daniel A. Brent & Lata Gangadharan & Anke D. Leroux & Paul A. Raschky, 2022. "Reducing bias in preference elicitation for environmental public goods," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 66(2), pages 280-308, April.
    12. Oerlemans, Leon A.G. & Chan, Kai-Ying & Volschenk, Jako, 2016. "Willingness to pay for green electricity: A review of the contingent valuation literature and its sources of error," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 875-885.
    13. Ojea, Elena & Loureiro, Maria L., 2011. "Identifying the scope effect on a meta-analysis of biodiversity valuation studies," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 706-724, September.
    14. Moisés Carrasco Garcés & Felipe Vasquez-Lavin & Roberto D. Ponce Oliva & José Luis Bustamante Oporto & Manuel Barrientos & Arcadio A. Cerda, 2021. "Embedding effect and the consequences of advanced disclosure: evidence from the valuation of cultural goods," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 1039-1062, August.
    15. Daniel A. Brent & Lata Gangadharan & Anke Leroux & Paul A. Raschky, 2014. "Putting One's Money Where One's Mouth is: Increasing Saliency in the Field," Monash Economics Working Papers 43-14, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    16. Felix Schläpfer, 2021. "Inadequate Standards in the Valuation of Public Goods and Ecosystem Services: Why Economists, Environmental Scientists and Policymakers Should Care," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, January.
    17. Alem, Yonas & Eggert, Håkan & Kocher, Martin G. & Ruhinduka, Remidius D., 2018. "Why (field) experiments on unethical behavior are important: Comparing stated and revealed behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 71-85.
    18. David A. Keiser & Joseph S. Shapiro, 2019. "US Water Pollution Regulation over the Past Half Century: Burning Waters to Crystal Springs?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 51-75, Fall.
    19. Schläpfer, Felix, 2016. "Democratic valuation (DV): Using majority voting principles to value public services," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 36-42.
    20. Diane Dupont, 2003. "CVM Embedding Effects When There Are Active, Potentially Active and Passive Users of Environmental Goods," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 25(3), pages 319-341, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • C42 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Survey Methods
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168133. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.