Results

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Longitudinal evidence for a midlife nadir in human well-being: results from four data sets

There is a large amount of cross-sectional evidence for a midlife low in the life cycle of human happiness and well-being (a `U shape?). Yet no genuinely longitudinal inquiry has uncovered evidence for a U-shaped pattern...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating the Influence of Life Satisfaction and Positive Affect on Later Income Using Sibling Fixed-Effects

The question of whether there is a connection between income and psychological well-being is a long-studied issue across the social, psychological, and behavioral sciences. Much research has found that richer people tend...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Happiness as a Driver of Risk-Avoiding Behavior

Most governments try to discourage their citizens from taking extreme risks with their health and lives. Yet, for reasons not understood, many people continue to do so. We suggest a new approach to this longstanding ques...Read more...

Book

The Wage Curve

The Wage Curve casts doubt on some of the most important ideas in macroeconomics, labor economics, and regional economics. According to macroeconomic orthodoxy, there is a relationship between unemployment and the ra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unemployment, Oil Prices and the Real Interest Rate: Evidence from Canada and the UK

There is still little agreement about what caused the large movement in unemployment in the industrialized nations in the 1970s and 1980s. This paper constructs a simple model in which the equilibrium rate of unemploymen...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Entrepreneurship

Do entrepreneurs earn supernormal returns, or does competitive pressure ensure that entrepreneurs receive the same utility as workers? If those who run their own business get supernormal returns (or 'rents') they shoul...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International Wage Curve

The paper provides international evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped locus linking the level of pay to the rate of regional (or industry) unemployment. This 'wage curve' is found using microeconomic data ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Pay-Setting, Self-Employment and the Unions: Themes of the 1980s

The paper attempts to evaluate three of the central themes in recent economic policy towards the labour market. It is critical of the idea that pay should be linked to company performance; it does not find evidence that ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Real Wage Determination and Rent-Sharing in Collective Bargaining Agreements

The microeconomic forces that influence real wages are not fully understood. This paper studies pay determination using data on approximately 600 labour contracts. It finds that the real wage is an increasing function of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Efficient and Inefficient Employment Outcomes: A Study Based on Canadian Contract Data

This paper estimates employment equations based on the traditional labour demand model and modern efficient bargain theory using data drawn from wage contracts signed in the Canadian private unionised sector between 1978...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

An Empirical Study of Unemployment and the Number of Children in Care

The paper uses British country data from the 1980s to try to identify the factors which determine the number of children in care. A doubling of unemployment appears to be associated, cateris paribus, with a rise by two t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Self-Employment and Mrs Thatcher's Enterprise

The paper studies self-employment in Great Britain using the British Social Attitude Surveys of 1983 to 1989. Drawing upon (i) direct survey questions, and (ii) econometric analysis, it finds no eivdence for the hypothes...Read more...