Results

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy: Forthcoming

Affective paternalism

Many decisions are curated, incentivised or nudged by a third party. Despite this, only a handful of studies have looked at paternalistic decision-makers and the psychological processes by which they arrive at their deci...Read more...

Blog

LSE Impact:

Get Happier - podcasting made simple

Discussing the launch of his new podcast series 'Get Happier', Paul Dolan argues for the underrated power of checklists and mnemonics and shows how they can be applied through the medium of podcasting....Read more...

Chapter

Accounting for consequences and claims in policy

in Wellbeing: Alternative policy perspectives

Fully appraising any policy requires us to capture all of its ripple effects and not simply the size of the splash when the pebble of intervention hits the water. It also requires that we weight the value of those effect...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

The sanctification of science during the pandemic

Maja Graso and Paul Dolan examine the manifestations and consequences of firmly-held beliefs in COVID-19 science....Read more...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine: Forthcoming

"Better the devil you know": Are stated preferences over health and happiness determined by how healthy and happy people are?

Most people want to be both happy and healthy. But which matters most when there is a trade-off between them? This paper addresses this question by asking 4000 members of the UK and US public to make various choices betw...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

How we feel depends on what we pay attention to

Policymakers are increasingly focusing on wellbeing as a policy goal, leaning on wellbeing measures to aid their work. Paul Dolan writes that the existing frameworks fail to properly account for the fundamental mechanism...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics:

Faster, higher, stronger… and happier? Relative achievement and marginal rank effects

Most prior research on the relationship between relative attainment and subjective wellbeing focuses on relative income. The direction of this relationship may, however, be positive or negative. Defining the target compa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

"Better the devil you know": are stated preferences over health and happiness determined by how healthy and happy people are?

Most people want to be both happy and healthy. But which matters most when there is a trade-off between them? This paper addresses this question by asking 4,000 members of the public in the UK and the US to make various ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Narrative traps: how can we avoid them in making decisions about Covid?

How have we made decisions about handling Covid-19? Did they take account of trade-offs to individual welfare, or were they prone to narrative bias? Amanda Henwood (LSE) discusses a recent report written with Paul Dolan ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Locked-in syndrome: why this must all end on 19 July

Zero COVID is unachievable, write Paul Dolan (LSE) and Sunetra Gupta (University of Oxford). Continuing to impose restrictions inflicts disproportionate harm on the young, small businesses and creative industries....Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How should we measure the impact of Covid-19 policies on our wellbeing?

Paul Dolan and Christian Krekel explain how measuring changes in life experience, as well as life expectancy, will enable richer evaluation of policies....Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Happy to help: how a UK micro-volunteering programme increased people's wellbeing

Levels of wellbeing increased significantly for individuals who participated in the NHS Volunteer Responders (NHSVR) programme, with effects lasting months after the volunteering period had ended, write Paul Dolan, Chris...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Happy to help: welfare effects of a nationwide volunteering programme

We study the wellbeing benefits from volunteering in England's National Health Service (NHS) Volunteer Responders programme, which was set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Using combined survey and administrative...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Don't let fears about the Indian variant stop us thinking rationally about risk

Now that those at greater risk of developing a serious case of COVID-19 have been vaccinated, B.1.617.2 - the 'Indian variant' - is less of a danger to the UK. Paul Dolan, Christian Krekel and George Wharton (LSE) argue ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

How a focus on wellbeing can help us make better policy decisions

Deaths, hospitalisations and cases have been the default metrics for policymakers during the pandemic. Paul Dolan (LSE) and a team of behavioural science experts propose a broader way of measuring policy outcomes that co...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data

Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi-experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in Lond...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Quantifying the intangible impact of the Olympics using subjective well-being data

Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi-experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in Lond...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

Would you choose to be happy? Tradeoffs between happiness and the other dimensions of life in a large population survey

A large literature documents the determinants of happiness. But is happiness all that people want from life; and if so, what type of happiness matters to them? Or are they willing to sacrifice happiness (however it is de...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The host with the most? The effects of the Olympic Games on happiness

We show that hosting the Olympic Games in 2012 had a positive impact on the life satisfaction and happiness of Londoners during the Games, compared to residents of Paris and Berlin. Notwithstanding issues of causal infer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Without my medal on my mind: counterfactual thinking and other determinants of athlete emotions

How achievement makes people feel depends upon counterfactual thoughts about what could have been. One body of evidence for this comes from studies of observer ratings of Olympians' happiness, which suggests that categor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Would you choose to be happy? Tradeoffs between happiness and the other dimensions of life in a large population survey

A large literature documents the correlates and causes of subjective well-being, or happiness. But few studies have investigated whether people choose happiness. Is happiness all that people want from life, or are they w...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Happiness Studies:

Happy talk: mode of administration effects on subjective well-being

There is increasing interest in subjective well-being (SWB) both in academic and policy circles. As a result, considerable research efforts are now being directed at the validity and reliability of SWB measures. This stu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Because I'm worth it: a lab-field experiment on the spillover effects of incentives in health

We conduct a controlled lab-field experiment to directly test the short-run spillover effects of one-off financial incentives in health. We consider how incentives affect effort in a physical activity task ? and then how...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Looking ahead: subjective time perception and individual time discounting

Time discounting is at the heart of economic decision-making. We disentangle hyperbolic discounting from subjective time perception using experimental data from incentive-compatible tests to measure time preferences, and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neighbors, Knowledge, and Nuggets: Two Natural Field Experiments on the Role of Incentives on Energy Conservation

There is increasing research on the exogenous impact of descriptive social norms on economic behavior. The research to date has a number of limitations: 1) it has not de-coupled the impact of the norm and the knowledge r...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Moving Up and Sliding Down: An Empirical Assessment of the Effect of Social Mobility on Subjective Wellbeing

Many people remain in the same income group as their parents and this is a cause of much discussion and some concern. In this work, we examine how intergenerational mobility affects subjective wellbeing (SWB) using the B...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Happy Talk: mode of administration effects on subjective well-being

Research on the measurement of subjective well-being (SWB) has escalated in recent years. This study contributes to the literature by examining how SWB reports differ by mode of survey administration. Using data from the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Step towards Valuing Utility the Marginal and Cardinal Way

Income has a direct impact on our utility as well as an indirect impact through the goods, services and life events it allows us to purchase. The indirect effect of income is not properly accounted for in existing resear...Read more...

CEP report

Measuring subjective wellbeing for public policy: recommendations on measures

The measurement of wellbeing is central to public policy. There are three uses for any measure: 1) monitoring progress; 2) informing policy design; and 3) policy appraisal. There has been increasing interest in the UK an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Comparing Willingness-to-Pay and Subjective Well-Being in the Context of Non-Market Goods

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals? willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-bei...Read more...