Results

CEP discussion paper

Is it possible to raise national happiness?

We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Measuring quality of life under spatial frictions

Using a quantitative spatial model as a data-generating process, we explore how spatial frictions affect the measurement of quality of life. We find that under a canonical parameterization, mobility frictions - generated...Read more...

Chapter

Individual wellbeing and cortisol

in Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing

The variety and the number of ways of measuring individual wellbeing has increased over the past two decades. In addition to all self-reported measures, researchers also consider a wide variety of objectively-measured in...Read more...

Journal article

Child Indicators Research:

Economic Development and Adolescent Wellbeing in 139 Countries

There is a positive association between the level of economic development and national levels of overall life satisfaction (OLS) in the adult population, with decreasing marginal returns. However, research shows no assoc...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Population Economics:

Teleworking and life satisfaction during COVID-19: the importance of family structure

We carry out a difference-in-differences analysis of a real-time survey conducted as part of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) survey and show that teleworking had a negative average effect on life satisfaction over...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Estimating the longevity of electric vehicles: What do 300 million MOT test results tell us?

Knowing how long the average vehicle remains roadworthy before being scrapped is a crucial input into life cycle assessment (LCA) and total cost of ownership (TCO) studies of different vehicle powertrains. This study lev...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics: Forthcoming

Social restrictions, leisure and well-being

A wide-ranging public debate surrounds how pandemic lockdown measures differentially impacted individuals and which precise mechanisms – whether financial-, health-, or policy-driven – predominate in determining these ef...Read more...

Journal article

Fiscal Studies:

New approaches to measuring welfare

Economics has traditionally understood 'welfare' (what makes a life go well) as the satisfaction of preference. This conceptualisation of welfare is typically measured using revealed preferences, proxied through income a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics: Forthcoming

Estimating students' valuation for college experiences

Quantifying the consumption value of college - the utility students derive from in-person instruction and on-campus social activities - has been challenging. We leverage the COVID-19 shock to elicit students' intended li...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Are the upwardly mobile more left-wing?

It is well-known that the wealthier are more likely to have Right-leaning political preferences. We here in addition consider the role of the individual's starting position, and in particular their upward social mobility...Read more...

Journal article

Information Technology & People:

Well-being and Working from Home during Covid-19

The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also cons...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How hybrid working from home works out

Hybrid working from home (WFH), whereby employees work a mix of days at home and at work each week, has become dominant for graduate employees in the US. This paper evaluates a randomized control trial on 1612 engineers,...Read more...

Journal article

Scientific Reports: Forthcoming

Happiness predicts compliance with preventive health behaviours during Covid-19 lockdowns

To combat the public health crisis of Covid-19, governments and public health officials have been asking individuals to substantially change their behaviours for prolonged periods of time. Are happier people more willing...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization :

Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: the miserable middle?

We use British panel data to explore the link between occupational status and life satisfaction. We find puzzling evidence for men of a U-shaped relationship in cross-section data: employees in medium-status occupations ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization : Forthcoming

Should bads be inflicted all at once, like Machiavelli said? Evidence from life-satisfaction data

Is wellbeing, measured by life satisfaction, higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Is it better if positive events are spread out or bunched? We answer these questions em...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics: Forthcoming

Gender, loneliness and happiness during Covid-19

We analyse a measure of loneliness from a representative sample of German individuals interviewed in both 2017 and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Both men and women felt lonelier during the COVID-19 p...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization:

Occupational prestige and life satisfaction in the UK: the miserable middle?

We use British panel data to explore the link between occupational status and life satisfaction. We find puzzling evidence for men of a U-shaped relationship in cross-section data: employees in medium-status occupations ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What makes a satisfying life? Prediction and interpretation with machine-learning algorithms

Machine Learning (ML) methods are increasingly being used across a variety of fields and have led to the discovery of intricate relationships between variables. We here apply ML methods to predict and interpret life sati...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Income and Wealth:

Pandemic policy and life satisfaction in Europe

We use data from the COME-HERE longitudinal survey collected by the University of Luxembourg to assess the effects of the policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on life satisfaction in France, Germany, Italy, Spain an...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...

Journal article

Japanese Economic Review:

The Joneses in Japan: income comparisons and financial satisfaction

This paper uses relatively large-scale internet survey data from Japan to analyse income comparisons and income satisfaction. In contrast to the vast majority of empirical work in the area of subjective well-being, we ar...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Why wellbeing should be the goal of policy

Wherever there is a fixed budget constraint, money should be allocated to policies which give the greatest increase in wellbeing per pound of expenditure, argues Richard Layard. Even policy-makers unmoved by wellbeing as...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Health Planning and Management: Forthcoming

Medical disputes and patient satisfaction in China: How does hospital management matter?

Objective: Satisfaction with healthcare may be captured by surveys of patients and staff, or in extreme cases, the number and severity of medical disputes. This study tries to investigate the relationship between satisfa...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Participation and Employee Ownership:

Footsie,Yeah! Share Prices and Worker Wellbeing

A small literature has shown that individual wellbeing varies with the price of company stock, but it is unclear whether this is due to wealth effects amongst those holding stock, or more general effects on sentiment, wi...Read more...

Journal article

Land Economics: Forthcoming

Urban land use fragmentation and human wellbeing

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

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...

Journal article

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin:

Inequality and Social Rank: Income Increases Buy More Life Satisfaction in More Equal Countries

How do income and income inequality combine to influence subjective well-being? We examined the relation between income and life satisfaction in different societies, and found large effects of income inequality within a ...Read more...

Journal article

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research:

The age U-shape in Europe: The protective role of partnership

In this study, we ask whether the U-shaped relationship between life satisfaction and age is flatter for individuals who are partnered. An analysis of cross-sectional EU-SILC data indicates that the decline in life satis...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

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

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...

Journal article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy:

What is the meaning of (statistical) life? Benefit-cost analysis in the time of COVID-19

Efforts to support public policy decisions need to be conducted carefully and thoughtfully. Recent efforts to estimate the social benefits of reductions in mortality risks associated with COVID-19 interventions are likel...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

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...

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy:

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...

Journal article

Behavioural Public Policy:

A happy choice: a response to the responses

We are very happy to see the engagement of so many eminent scholars in our field with our modest proposal for how to proceed with wellbeing policy formation in the UK. We are also heartened by the apparent endorsement of...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...

Journal article

Social History:

Female entrepreneurship: business, marriage and motherhood in England and Wales, 1851–1911

This article offers a new perspective on what it meant to be a business proprietor in Victorian Britain. Based on individual census records, it provides an overview of the full population of female business proprietors i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

The causes and consequences of early-adult unemployment: Evidence from cohort data

We here use the employment-history data from the British Cohort Study to calculate an individual's total experience of unemployment from the time they left education up to age 30. We show that, conditional on current une...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

Economica:

Who Got the Brexit Blues? The Effect of Brexit on Subjective Wellbeing in the UK

We use the 2015–16 waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (Understanding Society) to look at subjective wellbeing around the time of the June 2016 EU membership Referendum in the UK (Brexit). We employ measures of ...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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Psychology:

Top incomes and human well-being: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll

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 the relationship between the rising top income sh...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics:

When experienced and decision utility concur: The case of income comparisons

While there is now something of a consensus in the economics of happiness literature that income comparisons to others help determine subjective well-being, debate continues over the relative importance of own and refere...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...

Journal article

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management:

Does the presence of wind turbines have negative externalities for people in their surroundings? Evidence from well-being data

Throughout the world, governments foster the deployment of wind power to mitigate negative externalities of conventional electricity generation, notably CO2 emissions. Wind turbines, however, are not free of externalitie...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...

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

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...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Share capitalism and worker wellbeing

We show that worker wellbeing is determined not only by the amount of compensation workers receive but also by how compensation is determined. While previous theoretical and empirical work has often been preoccupied with...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...

Journal article

Science:

Inequality in mortality decreased among the young while increasing for older adults, 1990-2010

Many recent studies point to increasing inequality in mortality in the United States over the past 20 years. These studies often use mortality rates in middle and old age. We used poverty level rankings of groups of U.S....Read more...

Journal article

American Journal of Medical Research:

Why we should spend more on mental health

Mental health problems affect roughly 1 in 5 adults, and 1 in 10 children at any one time. In rich countries they cause roughly 40% of disability, absenteeism and underperformance at work, and cost some 7% of GDP. Under ...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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

Unmet aspirations as an explanation for the age U-shape in wellbeing

An emerging economic literature has found evidence that 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 midlife but beneficiall...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...

Journal article

Ecological Economics:

The greener, the happier? The effect of urban land use on residential well-being

We investigate the effect of urban land use on residential well-being in major German cities, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and cross-section data from the European Urban Atlas. We reduce concerns...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...

Journal article

Economics of Education Review:

Student satisfaction, league tables and university applications: Evidence from Britain

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 degrees. We show that NSS scores have ...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...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Are You Happy While You Work?

Using a new data source permitting individuals to record their well-being via a smartphone, we explore within-person variance in individuals’ well-being measured momentarily at random points in time. We find paid work is...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 mo...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...