How does inequality motivate people and at what cost? We develop a model of perpetual youth with heterogeneous upward-looking aspirations -- people value their consumption relative to the conditional mean of those above them in the distribution. Their survival depends on health capital produced...

It is well-known that expected utility (EU) has empirical deficiencies. Prospect theory (PT) has developed as an alternative with more descriptive validity. However, PT’s full function had not yet been quantified in the health domain. This paper is the first to simultaneously measure utility...

This paper is the first to apply prospect theory to societal health-related decision making. In particular, we allow for utility curvature, equity weighting, sign-dependence, and loss aversion in choices concerning quality of life of other people. We find substantial inequity aversion, both for...