In this interview, Miles Kimball discusses the field of cognitive economics, including research methods, data sources, and the economics of happiness. In terms of using surveys of attitudes and feelings to address national well-being, Kimball says: “You’ve got to face the facts that most government policies, if you have an A/B test, doing it one way is going to make it better for some people, and worse for other people — especially when you think about something like taxes….However, things do get better in society when individuals have statistical agency — you start identifying the subtle ways that can make everybody better off.”

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