Skip to main content

Sarah Flèche.

Sarah Flèche

Associate

Expertise: applied microeconomics, labour economics, economics of education, gender inequality and behavioural economics

Email:
sarah.fleche@univ-paris1.fr
Connect:
Website
Links:
CEP Community Wellbeing
University of Paris

Biography

Dr Sarah Flèche is a CNRS Research Fellow at the Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne (CES), University Paris and an Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance. Before joining the CES, she was an Assistant Professor at the Aix-Marseille School of Economics and a post-doctoral researcher at the CEP (LSE). She has been a consultant at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and completed her PhD in Economics at the Paris School of Economics in October 2014.

Current areas of research include:

  • Determinants of wellbeing: Happiness inequality; Mental health; Social comparisons; Time use; Childhood and Family; Institutions.
  • Economics of education: Teacher value-added; Non-cognitive Skills; Long-term impacts; Teaching practices.
  • Gender and labour market inequality: Relative income; Parental leave; Gender Norms; Work Conditions.

Publications

Blog
Sleeping our way to being productive

Sleep is key to our physical and mental health. It also affects people's employment and productivity. Joan Costa-i-Font, Sarah Fleche and Ricardo Pagan explore how the amount of weekly sleep influences employment, produc... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche and Ricardo Pagan

10 February 2024

Journal article
The welfare effects of time reallocation: evidence from Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a widely adopted practice implemented by over 70 countries to align sunlight with day-to-day activities and reduce energy demands. However, we do not have a clear knowledge of how it affect... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche and Ricardo Pagan

10 January 2024

Journal article - forthcoming
The labour market returns to sleep

Despite the growing prevalence of insufficient sleep among individuals, we still know little about the labour market return to sleep. To address this gap, we use longitudinal data from Germany and leverage exogenous fluc... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche and Ricardo Pagan

22 November 2023

Blog
Is daylight saving time good for us?

Daylight saving time is observed in over seventy countries with the goal of reducing energy use. Studies show that time shifts, by reducing the number of hours we sleep, decrease our life satisfaction. Joan Costa-Font, S... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche and Ricardo Pagan

05 October 2022

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
What lottery wins reveal about the gender gap

The UK has seen a rapid increase in self-employed workers over the last two decades, but only one-third are women. Sarah Flèche and colleagues analyse data on lottery winners to show that improving women's access to capi... Read more...

Sarah Flèche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

22 February 2022

Journal article
The Welfare Consequences of Centralization: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in Switzerland

Many countries are reallocating tasks and powers to more central levels of government. To identify centralization's welfare effects, I use a difference-in-differences design that relies on time and cross-cantonal variati... Read more...

Sarah Flèche

01 October 2021

Journal article
The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: A longitudinal study of lottery wins

Would improving women's access to capital reduce the gender entrepreneurial gap? We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing between large to small winners, we find that an increase ... Read more...

Sarah Flèche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

01 August 2021

CEP discussion papers
The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins

Can capital constraints explain why there are more male than female entrepreneurs in most societies? We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing between large to small winners, we fi... Read more...

Sarah Flèche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

19 April 2021

Journal article
COVID-19, lockdowns and well-being: Evidence from Google Trends

The COVID-19 pandemic and government intervention such as lockdowns may severely affect people's mental health. While lockdowns can help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to popula... Read more...

Abel Brodeur, Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Nattavudh Powdthavee

01 January 2021

Journal article
The long-lasting effects of family and childhood on adult wellbeing: Evidence from British cohort data

To what extent do childhood experiences continue to affect adult wellbeing over the life course? Previous work on this link has been carried out either at one particular adult age or for some average over adulthood. We h... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Warn N. Lekfuangfu

01 January 2021

Journal article
Gender norms, fairness and relative working hours within households

Using data in the United States, UK and Germany, we show that women whose working hours exceed those of their male partners report lower life satisfaction on average. By contrast, men do not report lower life satisfactio... Read more...

Sarah Flèche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

01 August 2020

CEP discussion papers
Covid-19, lockdowns and well-being: evidence from Google trends

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends dat... Read more...

Abel Brodeur, Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Nattavudh Powdthavee

19 May 2020

Journal article
Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes

We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers’ labour market performance. To isolate variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel datase... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font and Sarah Flèche

01 January 2020

Journal article
Neighbors' Income, Public Goods, and Well-Being

How does neighbors' income affect individual well-being? Our analysis is based on rich U.S. local data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which contains information on where respondents live and their s... Read more...

Abel Brodeur and Sarah Flèche

01 June 2019

Journal article
Gender Norms and Relative Working Hours: Why Do Women Suffer More Than Men from Working Longer Hours Than Their Partners?

Constraints that prevent women from working longer hours are argued to be important drivers of the gender wage gap in the United States. We provide evidence that in couples where the wife's working hours exceed the husba... Read more...

Sarah Flèche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

01 May 2018

CEP discussion papers
The long-lasting effects of family and childhood on adult wellbeing: evidence from British cohort data

To what extent do childhood experiences continue to affect adult wellbeing over the life course? Previous work on this link has been carried out either at one particular adult age or for some average of adulthood. We her... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Warn N. Lekfuangfu

26 July 2017

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Economics of a good night's sleep

Parents whose sleep quality is reduced by young children waking them in the night are less likely to work, work shorter hours and/or earn less than otherwise similar people who enjoy a good night’s sleep. The negative la... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font and Sarah Flèche

03 July 2017

CEP discussion papers
The key determinants of happiness and misery

Understanding the key determinants of people?s life satisfaction will suggest policies for how best to reduce misery and promote wellbeing. This paper provides evidence from survey data on USA, Australia, Britain and Ind... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward

07 June 2017

CEP discussion papers
Teacher quality, test scores and non-cognitive skills: evidence from primary school teachers in the UK

Schooling can produce both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, both of which are important determinants of adult outcomes. Using very rich data from a UK birth cohort study, I estimate teacher value added (VA) models for... Read more...

Sarah Flèche

28 March 2017

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Origins of happiness

Understanding the key determinants of people’s life satisfaction makes it possible to suggest policies for how best to reduce misery and promote wellbeing. A forthcoming book by Richard Layard and colleagues discusses ev... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward

01 March 2017

CEP discussion papers
Parental sleep and employment: evidence from a British cohort study

We show that sleep deprivation exerts a strong negative effect on labour market performance. We exploit variations in child sleep quality to instrument for parental sleep quality. A one-hour reduction in sleep duration s... Read more...

Joan Costa-Font and Sarah Flèche

10 February 2017

Journal article
Do More of Those in Misery Suffer from Poverty, Unemployment or Mental Illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life... Read more...

Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard

01 February 2017

Books
Origins of Happiness

What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people's well-being? How would policy change if well-being was the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human prior... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward

27 January 2017

Journal article
Economic Growth Evens Out Happiness: Evidence from Six Surveys

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has fallen in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern gro... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Claudia Senik

01 September 2016

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Misery and mental health

Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi... Read more...

Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard

22 February 2016

CEP discussion papers
Distaste for centralization: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Switzerland

Do people care about the degree of centralization? This paper examines the effects of local centralization reforms on individuals' well-being using a quasi-natural experiment in Switzerland. The results reveal that centr... Read more...

Sarah Flèche

10 November 2015

CEP discussion papers
Do more of those in misery suffer from poverty, unemployment or mental illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life... Read more...

Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard

03 June 2015

CEP discussion papers
Economic growth evens-out happiness: evidence from six surveys

In spite of the great U-turn that saw income inequality rise in Western countries in the 1980s, happiness inequality has fallen in countries that have experienced income growth (but not in those that did not). Modern gro... Read more...

Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Flèche and Claudia Senik

08 October 2014

CEP discussion papers
Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US

This paper analyses how neighbors' income affect agents' well-being using unprecedented data from the BRFSS and the City of Somerville. We conduct a multi-scale approach at the county, ZIP code and street-levels and find... Read more...

Abel Brodeur and Sarah Flèche

15 March 2013

spacer