Miles Spencer Kimball

About

Miles Spencer Kimball holds the Eaton Chair in Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder and is Emeritus Professor of Economics and Survey Research at the University of Michigan. Born in 1960, he is currently 63 years old. He is also an Affiliate of the Behavioral and Health Genomics Center at the University of Southern California and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. Politically, Kimball identifies as an independent with strong opinions that do not align neatly with either the Republican or Democratic Party, and he is open to revising his views in response to cogent arguments. Before earning his doctorate in economics from Harvard University, he completed a Master's degree in linguistics with a thesis on the philosophy of language. Kimball is recognized as a pioneer in monetary policy, advocating for the use of deep negative interest rates as a tool to effectively combat economic crises. He shares his ideas and research through his blog, "Confessions of a Supply-Side Liberal." Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Actuarial science
• Economics
• Management science
• Data science
• Public economics
• Psychology
• Business
• Risk analysis (engineering)

Selected publications

• Self-reported wellbeing indicators are a valuable complement to traditional economic indicators but are not yet ready to compete with them

  Behavioural Public Policy · 2020 · 31 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  : single-question wellbeing measures do not seem to fully capture what people care about. We briefly review the existing evidence, suggesting that survey respondents, when asked to make real or hypothetical trade-offs, would not always choose to maximize their predicted response to single-question wellbeing measures. The deviations appear systematic, and they persist under conditions where alternative explanations are less plausible. We also review an approach for combining single-question measu…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What Do Happiness Data Mean? Theory and Survey Evidence

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2021-02-01 · 23 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  What utility notion-e.g., flow/lifetime, self/family-centered-do self-reported well-being (SWB) questions measure? Existing applications make different assumptions regarding the (i) life domains,(ii) time horizons, and (iii) other-regarding preferences captured by SWB data. To obtain relevant evidence, we ask survey respondents what they had in mind regarding (i)-(iii) when answering commonly used-life satisfaction, happiness, ladder-and new SWB questions. We find that respondents' self-reports…

  PublisherDOI

• What do Happiness Data Mean? Theory and Survey Evidence

  Journal of the European Economic Association · 2023-05-26 · 17 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract What utility notion—e.g. flow/lifetime, self/family-centered—do self-reported well-being (SWB) questions measure? Existing applications make different assumptions regarding the (i) life domains, (ii) time horizons, and (iii) other-regarding preferences captured by SWB data. To obtain relevant evidence, we ask survey respondents what they had in mind regarding (i)–(iii) when answering commonly used—life satisfaction, happiness, ladder—and new SWB questions. We find that respondents’ self…

  PublisherDOI

• From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions

  Annual Review of Economics · 2024-05-20 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Happiness data—survey respondents’ self-reported well-being (SWB)—have become increasingly common in economics research, with recent calls to use them in policymaking. Researchers have used SWB data in novel ways—for example, to learn about welfare or preferences when choice data are unavailable or difficult to interpret. Focusing on leading examples of this pioneering research, the first part of this review uses a simple theoretical framework to reverse-engineer some of the crucial assumptions…

  PublisherDOI

• Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity in Self-Reported Well-Being

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-09-01 · 10 citations

  reportOpen access

  Analyses of self-reported-well-being (SWB) survey data may be confounded if people use response scales differently. We use calibration questions, designed to have the same objective answer across respondents, to measure dimensional (i.e., specific to an SWB dimension) and general (i.e., common across questions) scale-use heterogeneity. In a sample of ~3, 350 MTurkers, we find substantial such heterogeneity that is correlated with demographics. We develop a theoretical framework and econometric a…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant P01AG026571

  NIH · $12.4M · 2017

• Using the Dynamics of Subjective Well-Being to Measure the Import of Events

  NIH · $1.3M · 2011–2017

• NIH Grant R03AG016143

  NIH · $76k · 2000

Frequent coauthors

• Ori Heffetz

  299 shared

• Daniel J. Benjamin

  University of California, Los Angeles

  203 shared

• Kristen B. Cooper

  Gordon College

  79 shared

• Ruchir Agarwal

  Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center

  50 shared

• Matthew D. Shapiro

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  40 shared

• Alex Rees-Jones

  University of Pennsylvania

  32 shared

• Daniel J. Benjamin

  University of California, Los Angeles

  27 shared

• Tyler Shumway

  Brigham Young University

  25 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1987

• M.A., Linguistics

  Brigham Young University

  1986

• B.A., Economics

  Harvard University

  1982

Similar researchers at University of Colorado Boulder

• Wolfgang Kellerh-53
• Yongmin Chenh-39
• Murat Iyigunh-29