Essays on ICTs, Expectations and Subjective Well-being

Abstract

This doctoral thesis investigates how emerging ICTs affect individuals’ expectations and their subjective well-being. It extends an extant literature that has been devoted to studying the economic effects of ICTs, such as, for instance, in the literature studying the productivity and growth effects of the internet, and the more recent strand of research on the employment effects of automation and robotics. Digitalization efforts and related policies continue to disrupt existing social and economic activities, and represent the background and empirical setting that provide the foundations of this thesis. By focusing on the possible subjective welfare effects of emerging ICTs, this thesis presents novel empirical findings that shed light on the perspective of those who are directly exposed to their consequences—namely individual users and workers.