Happiness and declining inframarginal values

I accept the broad findings of happiness studies on the longitudinal and cross-sectional relationships between income and happiness, and argue that standard demand curve analysis is inconsistent with those findings. This inconsistency is overcome with a simple dynamic modification to the standard demand curve that assumes the psychological adaptation to consuming a good is captured by declining values of inframarginal units. I argue that this modification is consistent with two evolutionary considerations related to happiness and that it has interesting implications for such things as anticipation and happiness, apparent anomalies in discounting the future, the connection between World War II and the end of the Great Depression, and the possibility of increasing our happiness by moderating our consumption.      

When consumers love their brands: Exploring the concept and its dimensions

Consumers may develop feelings of love toward some brands, but the meaning and underlying dimensions of this construct require further development. Through an exploratory Internet study of 843 respondents in France, this research used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore the concept of love. Eleven dimensions emerge through a correspondence analysis and the concomitant use of a multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis of the wording that respondents use to describe their feeling of love and the special type of relationships they have with the brands they love. These dimensions identified in France compare to dimensions of love found in previous research conducted in the United States.     

Effects of Nationality,Gender, and Religiosity on Business-Related Ethicality

Cross-national studies of business-related ethicality frequently have concluded that Americans possess higher ethical standards than non-Americans. These conclusions have generally been based on survey responses of relatively small convenience samples of individuals in a very limited number of countries. This article reports a study of the relationship between nationality and business-related ethicality based on survey responses from more than 6300 business students attending 120 colleges and universities in 36 countries. Two well-documented determinants of business ethics (gender and religiosity) were investigated as moderators of the nationality–business ethicality relationship. The major research finding is that, while statistically significant differences were found between the business-related ethicality of American survey participants and the business-related ethicality of the non-American survey participants, the magnitudes of the differences were not substantial. The results of the study suggest that (i) more empirical cross-cultural/national research is required on business-related ethicality and (ii) previous explanations for cross-cultural/national differences in ethics need to be reconsidered before further generalizations are warranted.     

Structural Challenges to Sustained Economic Growth in China

This essay focuses on three broad sets of issues that may not slow China's GDP growth to under 3 percent a year, but they will almost certainly create major social and physical problems that will be difficult to deal with. The first is the demographic and education challenges featured by a rapidly aging population combined with a large share of the population being under-educated. The second is the environmental challenges China faces in achieving the state goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. The third challenge is low consumption and unprecedentedly high investment, a strategy that has driven China's high growth rates in the past decades but is no longer sustainable. These three challenges are intertwined, making China's adjustment path even more uncertain. What would a sustainable development strategy involve? The clearest need is to shift investment away from energy-intensive housing and infrastructure and toward investment in people.