Archive for: Survey-Based Measurement of Well-Being

I am a Professor in the Behavioral Decision Making Area at the Anderson School of Management and in the Human Genetics Department at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research is in behavioral economics, which incorporates ideas and methods from psychology into economic analysis, and genoeconomics, which incorporates genetic data into economics.

Some current research topics include understanding errors people make in statistical reasoning; exploring how best to use survey measures of subjective well-being (such as happiness and life satisfaction) to track national well-being and evaluate policies; and studying genetic predictors for behavioral and social phenotypes such as educational attainment and subjective well-being. Past work has addressed how economic behavior relates to cognitive ability and social identity (ethnicity, race, gender, and religion).

I earned my Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and was a postdoc at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Before coming to UCLA, I held faculty positions in the Economics Department at Cornell University and at the Center for Economic and Social Research and Economics Department at the University of Southern California. I am also a Faculty Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For more information about my work, check out my website: danieljbenjamin.com