Economic Shocks and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment
利用博茨瓦纳货币突然贬值作为准实验，结合调查时点巧合，发现货币贬值显著降低了个人主观幸福感，表明宏观冲击有短期福利成本。
This article examines how economic shocks affect individual well-being in developing countries. Using the case of a sudden and unanticipated currency devaluation in Botswana as a quasi-experiment, we examine how this monetary shock affects individuals' evaluations of well-being. We do so by using microlevel survey data, which—incidentally—were collected in the days surrounding the devaluation. The chance occurrence of the devaluation during the time of the survey enables us to use pretreatment respondents, surveyed before the devaluation, as approximate counterfactuals for post-treatment respondents, surveyed after the devaluation. Our estimates show that the devaluation had a large and significantly negative effect on individuals' evaluations of subjective well-being. These results suggest that macroeconomic shocks, such as unanticipated currency devaluations, may have significant short-term costs in the form of reductions in people's sense of well-being.