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CentrePiece article

Can we be happier?

If the goal for society is the greatest possible all-round happiness, how can that be achieved? Richard Layard and George Ward outline the evidence on what explains the huge variation in people's life satisfaction – and ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

We can increase happiness through public policy - and in our jobs and private lives too

As research shows us what makes us happy, a world happiness movement is being born, write Richard Layard and George Ward....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does employee happiness have an impact on productivity?

This article provides quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between employee happiness and productivity in the field. We study the universe of call center sales workers at British Telecom (BT), one of the Unite...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Employee wellbeing: the impact on productivity and firm performance

Does having happier staff mean higher productivity and improvements in companies' bottom line? A study of over 1.8 million employees across 73 countries by Christian Krekel, George Ward and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve detects a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Employee wellbeing, productivity and firm performance

Does higher employee wellbeing lead to higher productivity, and, ultimately, to tangible benefits to the bottom line of businesses? We survey the evidence and study this question in a meta-analysis of 339 independent res...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Happiness at work

Work-life balance is a particularly strong predictor of people’s happiness. High degrees of job satisfaction can hide low levels of engagement at work. Happiness helps to shape job market outcomes, productivity and firm ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

CEP discussion paper

Happiness at work

Happiness is typically defined by how people experience and evaluate their lives as a whole. Since the majority of people spend much of their lives at work, it is critically important to gain a solid understanding of the...Read more...

CentrePiece article

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...

CEP discussion paper

Early maternal employment and non-cognitive outcomes in early childhood and adolescence: evidence from British birth cohort data

We analyse the relationship between early maternal employment and child emotional and behavioural outcomes in early childhood and adolescence. Using rich data from a cohort of children born in the UK in the early 1990s, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Is happiness a predictor of election results?

Is it in politicians’ interest to focus policy on subjective well-being (SWB)? Many governments and international organisations have recently begun to measure progress at least partly in terms of the population’s SWB or ...Read more...