What does it mean for humans to have logarithmic utility for money?
Do we have a measurable quantitative concept of utility that’s natural enough that it would be silly to pull stuff like “utility2= log utility1, now humans have linear utility2 for money”!
The main ways to get a handle on this are to use subjective well-being scores (which is what those graphs do, and is somewhat questionable as to whether it’s a natural unit), or to ask people about trade-offs or gambles they’d make (to elicit preferences as in a vN-M utility function). Both approaches lead to data saying it’s approximately logarithmic, and there are also some theoretical reasons to think this is roughly right.
What does it mean for humans to have logarithmic utility for money? Do we have a measurable quantitative concept of utility that’s natural enough that it would be silly to pull stuff like “utility2= log utility1, now humans have linear utility2 for money”!
The main ways to get a handle on this are to use subjective well-being scores (which is what those graphs do, and is somewhat questionable as to whether it’s a natural unit), or to ask people about trade-offs or gambles they’d make (to elicit preferences as in a vN-M utility function). Both approaches lead to data saying it’s approximately logarithmic, and there are also some theoretical reasons to think this is roughly right.