Life Satisfaction, Income Comparisons and Individual Traits
利用德国社会经济面板数据，研究发现个体的人格和情感特质显著影响其在参照群体收入排名中获得的效用，进而影响生活满意度，这对经济模型构建和行为预测有参考价值。
People gain utility from occupying a higher ranked position in the income distribution of the reference group. This paper investigates whether these gains depend on an individual's set of personality and affective traits. Using the 2000 to 2013 waves of the German Socio‐economic Panel dataset (SOEP), a subjective question on Life Satisfaction, and three different measures of personal and affective traits, we find significant and robust differences across groups and conclude that traits determine the relationship between rank and life satisfaction. The heterogeneity on the importance of income comparisons is relevant, for example, when building economic models, predicting individuals' behavior, or making welfare judgments.