Results

CEP discussion paper

Quality of life in a dynamic spatial model

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Machiavelli versus concave utility functions: should bads be spread out or concentrated?

Is wellbeing higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Should positive events be spread out or bunched? We answer these questions exploiting quarterly data on six positive an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A happy choice: wellbeing as the goal of government

In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. W...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...

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

Widening the high school curriculum to include soft skill training: impacts on health, behaviour, emotional wellbeing and occupational aspirations

From 2020 the health and relationships aspects of Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents. However less is known about how it can be taught in an effective manner....Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

Childhood circumstances and young adult outcomes: the role of parental financial problems

Is there a relationship between childhood circumstances and outcomes later on in life? Andrew E. Clark, Conchita D’Ambrosio, and Marta Barazzetta consider the cognitive and non-cognitive consequences on young adults who ...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...

Journal article

Social Science and Medicine:

Life satisfaction, QALYs, and the monetary value of health

The monetary value of a quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) is frequently used to assess the benefits of health interventions and inform funding decisions. However, there is little consensus on methods for the estimation o...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Early-life correlates of later-life well-being: evidence from the Wisconsin longitudinal study

We here use data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) to provide one of the first analyses of the distal (early-life) and proximal (later-life) correlates of older-life subjective well-being. Unusually, we have tw...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

CentrePiece article

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...

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

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...

CEP discussion paper

Diversity and neighbourhood satisfaction

This paper investigates the impact of ethnic diversity on individuals’ overall satisfaction with and other aspects of their neighbourhood. It uses panel data and a variety of empirical methods to control for potential en...Read more...

CVER Research Paper

Vocational vs. General Education and Employment over the Life-Cycle: New Evidence from PIAAC

It has been argued that vocational education facilitates the school-to-work transition but reduces later adaptability to changing environments. Using the recent international PIAAC data, we confirm such a trade-off over ...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...

CentrePiece article

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...

CEP discussion paper

Top incomes and human well-being around the world

The share of income held by the top 1 percent in many countries around the world has been rising persistently over the last 30 years. But we continue to know little about how the rising top income shares affect human wel...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do people seek to maximize their subjective well-being?

In a new survey we ask respondents, after a standard Subjective Well-Being (SWB) question, if they can think of changes in their lives that would improve their SWB score. If the SWB score is just one argument among other...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

CentrePiece article

Happier workers, higher profits

Alex Bryson and colleagues find that UK employees' job satisfaction is positively associated with workplace financial performance....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does worker wellbeing affect workplace performance?

This paper uses linked employer-employee data to investigate the relationship between employees’ subjective well-being and workplace performance in Britain. The analyses show a clear, positive and statistically-significa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

CEP discussion paper

Share capitalism and worker wellbeing

We show that worker wellbeing is not only related to the amount of compensation workers receive but also how they receive it. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been pre-occupied with individual perf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Women Earn Less Even as Social Entrepreneurs?

Based upon unique survey data collected using respondent driven sampling methods, we investigate whether there is a gender pay gap among social entrepreneurs in the UK. We find that women as social entrepreneurs earn 29%...Read more...

Journal article

Feature Issue:

What predicts a successful life? A life-course model of well-being

Policy makers who care about well-being need a recursive model of how adult life‐satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such a ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Not So Dissatisfied After All? The Impact of Union Coverage on Job Satisfaction

The links between unionisation and job satisfaction remain controversial. In keeping with the existing literature we find strong statistically significant negative correlations between unionisation and overall job satisf...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Eliciting Taxpayer Preferences Increases Tax Compliance

Two experiments show that eliciting taxpayer preferences on government spending—providing taxpayer agency--increases tax compliance. We first create an income and taxation environment in a laboratory setting to test for ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Can Life Satisfaction Data Tell Us About Discrimination Against Sexual Minorities? A Structural Equation Model for Australia and the United Kingdom

Very little is known about how the differential treatment of sexual minorities could influence subjective reports of overall well-being. This paper seeks to fill this gap. Data from two large surveys that provide nationa...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Upward Social Mobility, Well-being and Political Preferences: Evidence from the BHPS

The paper uses 18 waves of BHPS data to provide evidence of the roles of both own social status and upward mobility relative to one's parents on job and life satisfaction, preferences for redistribution, pro-public secto...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-Course Model of Well-Being

If policy-makers care about well-being, they need a recursive model of how adult life-satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. We estimate such...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Student Satisfaction, League Tables and University Applications

We investigate the impact of information about student satisfaction on university choice, using data from the UK’s National Student Survey (NSS) and on applications to undergraduate degree courses. We show that the NSS h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Mental Illness and Unhappiness

This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points: 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if men...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Unmet Aspirations as an Explanation for the Age U-Shape in Human Wellbeing

A large literature in behavioral and social sciences has found that human wellbeing follows a U-shape over age. Some theories have assumed that the U-shape is caused by unmet expectations that are felt painfully in midli...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

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

Human Capital, Matching and Job Satisfaction

Using a model of wage determination developed by Stevens (2003) we offer an explanation of why tenure has a negative effect when entered in job satisfaction equations. If job satisfaction measures match quality, then the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Genes, Economics and Happiness

A major finding from research into the sources of subjective well-being is that individuals exhibit a “baseline” level of happiness. We explore the influence of genetic variation by employing a twin design and genetic as...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics:

Genes, economics, and happiness

We explore the influence of genetic variation on subjective well-being by employing a twin design and genetic association study. In a nationally representative twin sample, we first show that ~33% of the variation in lif...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does High Involvement Management Improve Worker Wellbeing?

Employees exposed to high involvement management (HIM) practices have higher subjective wellbeing, fewer accidents but more short absence spells than “like” employees not exposed to HIM. These results are robust to exten...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Model for the Delivery of Evidence-Based PSHE (Personal Wellbeing) in Secondary Schools

Personal Social Health and Economic (PSHE) education is a non-statutory school subject designed to facilitate the delivery of a number of key competencies relevant to health, safety and wellbeing. As well as contributing...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Money and Happiness: Evidence from the Industry Wage Structure

There is a well-established positive correlation between life-satisfaction measures and income in individual level cross-sectional data. This paper attempts to provide some evidence on whether this correlation reflects c...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Do Higher Wages Come at a Price?

Using linked employer-employee data for Britain we find job satisfaction and job anxiety are negatively correlated but higher wages are associated with higher job satisfaction and higher job anxiety. However, we observe ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Does Innovation Affect Worker Well-being?

We explore the effects of management innovations on worker well-being using private sector linked employer-employee data for Britain. We find management innovations are associated with lower worker well-being and lower j...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Life satisfaction and relative income: perceptions and evidence

Using a unique dataset we study both the actual and self-perceived relationship between subjective well-being and income comparisons against a wide range of potential comparison groups, enabling us to investigate a broad...Read more...

CEE/Education and skills discussion paper

School Quality, Child Wellbeing and Parents Satisfaction

Researchers in economics of education usually assume that parents choose schools for their high academic performance, with some support from revealed preference evidence based on local house prices. However, anecdotal ev...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...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The marginal utility of income

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) me...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Overqualification, Job Dissatisfaction and Increasing Dispersion in the Returns to Graduate Education

Increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education is found, using quantile regression. This trend is related to rising overqualification. We distinguish between and validate measures of “Real” and “Formal” overq...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Lags and Leads in Life Satisfaction: A Test of the Baseline Hypothesis

We look for evidence of habituation in twenty waves of German panel data: do individuals, after life and labour market events, tend to return to some baseline level of well-being? Although the strongest life satisfaction...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Leeway for the Loyal: A Model of Employee Discretion

This paper examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist’s perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade-off between the positive effects of discretion on potentia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Marginal Utility of Income

In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) me...Read more...

CEP report

Work-Life Balance, Management Practices and Productivity

Do “Anglo-Saxon” management practices generate higher productivity only at the expense of lousy work-life balance (WLB) for workers? Many critics of “neo-libéralisme sauvage” have argued that increased competition from g...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Union Membership Really Reduce Job Satisfaction?

We investigate the effect of union membership on job satisfaction. Whilst it is common to study the effects of union status on satisfaction treating individual membership as given, in this paper, we account for the endog...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Nursery Cities: Urban Diversity, Process Innovation and the Life-Cycle of Products

A simple model of process innovation is proposed, where firms learn about their ideal production process by making prototypes. We build around this a dynamic general equilibrium model, and derive conditions under which d...Read more...