What Does "Hedonic" Mean in an Economic Context?

dowell/Getty Images
By
Mike Moffatt
Mike Moffatt
Professor of Business, Economics, and Public Policy
  • Ph.D., Business Administration, Richard Ivey School of Business
  • M.A., Economics, University of Rochester
  • B.A., Economics and Political Science, University of Western Ontario
Mike Moffatt, Ph.D., is an economist and professor. He teaches at the Richard Ivey School of Business and serves as a research fellow at the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management.
Learn about our Editorial Process
Updated on March 17, 2017

In an economic context, "hedonic" means of or relating to utility. (In a more general sense, hedonic is related in its etymology to hedonism, which is the search for pleasure.)  A hedonic econometric model is one where the independent variables are related to quality; e.g. the quality of a product that one might buy or the quality of a job one might take.

A hedonic model of wages might correspond to the idea that there are compensating differentials -- that workers would get higher wages for jobs that were more unpleasant.

Terms related to Hedonic:

  • Exponential Utility Function
  • CES Utility
  • Expected Utility

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Journal Articles on Hedonic:

Format
mla apa chicago
Your Citation
Moffatt, Mike. "What Does "Hedonic" Mean in an Economic Context?" ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/hedonic-economics-definition-1148011. Moffatt, Mike. (2021, February 16). What Does "Hedonic" Mean in an Economic Context? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/hedonic-economics-definition-1148011 Moffatt, Mike. "What Does "Hedonic" Mean in an Economic Context?" ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/hedonic-economics-definition-1148011 (accessed August 19, 2022).