Results

CEP occasional paper

CEP wellbeing coefficient database

Wellbeing cost-benefit analysis requires credible estimates of how much specific life circumstances change subjective wellbeing. This paper documents and contextualises a compendium of 123 such estimates, drawn from 19 d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What is the public?s social welfare function?

Optimal public policy requires a social welfare function defined over individual utilities. While there is substantial research on income-based social welfare functions, no published study has directly elicited public pr...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

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...

Journal article

Nature Human Behaviour:

Why single-item measures of wellbeing are best

We argue that individual wellbeing is best captured by single self-reports of one's overall quality of life. This approach is direct, efficient, globally comparable and distinguishes wellbeing from what might explain it....Read more...

CentrePiece article

Public sector relocation: lessons from the BBC?s move to Salford

Moving public agencies out of London was a major plank of the levelling-up agenda. Max Nathan, Henry Overman, Capucine Riom and Maria Sanchez-Vidal show how the BBC?s move to Salford had a positive effect on the local ec...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Why people like living in cities: a new measure of the quality of life

People like to live in certain places, even when higher wages are on offer elsewhere. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel show that once people?s preferences are considered, big cities offer a hi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Investing in mental health: the economic benefits of NHS talking therapies

What are the effects of psychological therapies on patients? employment and earnings? In the first analysis of this question using nationally representative data, Klaudia Rzepnicka, Emma Sharland, Marta Rossa, Ted Dolby,...Read more...

Blog

What works centre for local economic growth:

How to evaluate - Ask for help

Evidence-based policy is at the heart of good practices in policymaking. Impact evaluation provides a key source of evidence to help understand what really works and we need more impact evaluation of local economic growt...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willingness to pay for workplace amenities

We develop a revealed preference approach to measure the value of workplace amenities by analyzing how variation in non-wage job attributes affects excess mass in the earnings distribution at budget discontinuities. The ...Read more...

Blog

What works centre for local economic growth:

Recommendations for the evaluation of local growth policies

Rigorous evaluation improves our understanding of the effectiveness of local economic policies. Robust evaluation can be challenging but can answer many questions and lead to a more nuanced understanding. By learning fro...Read more...

Blog

Bank Underground:

Forbearance lending as a crisis management tool

The Bank of England Agenda for Research (BEAR) sets the key areas for new research at the Bank over the coming years. This post is an example of issues considered under the Prudential Architecture Theme which focuses on ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Income and Wealth :

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...

CEP discussion paper

Cultural exception? The impact of price regulation on prices and variety in the market for books

Fixed book price (FBP) agreements are a form of resale price maintenance applied to books in various countries. FBP restricts retail price competition with the aim of promoting book production variety. Yet, despite its p...Read more...

Blog

LSE Euro PP:

A new measure of quality of life explains why people like living in bigger cities

People like to live in certain places, even when higher wages are on offer elsewhere. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel show that once you take into account people's preferences, large cities o...Read more...

Chapter

WELLBY

in Elgar Encyclopedia of Behavioural and Experimental Economics

The WELLBY is a measure of individual subjective wellbeing, as judged by individuals themselves, capturing both the quality of life and the length of life. We outline its use for measuring social progress and for social ...Read more...

Blog

Lives well lived:

Richard Layard: the science of wellbeing (podcast)

Richard Layard is a British Labour Economist, a member of the House of Lords, and co-editor of the World Happiness Report. Layard highlights the role of life satisfaction and wellbeing in government policy, and the impo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How effective are R&D tax incentives? Reconciling micro and macro evidence

Recent firm-level studies find R&D tax incentives to be much more effective at stimulating firms' R&D investment than what aggregate analyses indicate. Based on a distributed analysis of official R&D survey and administr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effect of adult psychological therapies on employment and earnings: evidence from England

People suffering from common mental disorders (CMD) such as depression and anxiety are more likely to be economically inactive. Psychological therapies are highly effective at treating CMDs but less is known about their ...Read more...

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...

CEP discussion paper

Multipliers from a major public sector relocation: the BBC moves to Salford

This paper considers the impact of a major public sector relocation: the British Broadcasting Corporation's partial move from London to Salford, Greater Manchester starting in 2011. We identify effects of the move, using...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists,:

Management practices and climate policy in China

We investigate how management quality moderates the impact of carbon pricing on Chinese firms. Based on interviews with managers and lead engineers at manufacturing firms in Hubei and Beijing, we construct a novel index ...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

Labour Economics:

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...

CEP discussion paper

Talking therapy: Impacts of a nationwide mental health service in England

Mental health problems impose significant costs, yet healthcare systems of-ten overlook them. We provide the first causal evidence on the effectiveness of a nationwide-scaled mental health service in England for treating...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

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:

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...

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...

Journal article

Scientific Reports:

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...

CEP discussion paper

Evaluating merger effects

This paper proposes a new algorithm with which to identify the potential effect of mergers by comparing the outcomes of interest in areas of overlap for the merging parties vis-a-vis areas of no overlap within a differen...Read more...

Journal article

Managerial and Decision Economics:

Evaluating merger effects

This paper proposes a new algorithm to identify the potential effect of mergers by comparing the outcomes of interest in areas of overlap for the merging parties vis-a-vis areas where no overlap exists within a differenc...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization :

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:

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 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 & 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

Urban Studies:

Incubators, accelerators and urban economic development

We combine theory and evidence on incubator and accelerator programmes and their effects on urban economic development. These structured co-working programmes have grown rapidly. However, a rich descriptive literature re...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...

Blog

What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth:

Monitoring and evaluating during the Covid-19 recovery

Helene Donnat summarises the discussion from the What Works Growth's fifth Economic Recovery workshop, exploring the challenges places are facing in undertaking good quality monitoring and evaluation....Read more...

Journal article

Land Economics:

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...

Journal article

Heliyon:

Estimating the impact of the Internet of Things on productivity in Europe

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to interconnected devices and objects that collect and transmit data via the Internet. The IoT is an evolving technology, promising to revolutionise industries, but also demanding far-...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...

CVER Research Paper

Employee Training and Firm Performance:Quasi-experimental evidence from the European Social Fund

As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant for good economic and social outcomes. However, so far there is little or no causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. This paper studies a l...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...

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...

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...

Journal article

The Journal of Industrial Economics:

The impact of maximum markup regulation on prices

Markup regulation is a common, yet understudied type of regulation. We analyze the repeal of maximum wholesale and retail markup regulation in an oligopolistic and vertically nonintegrated market. By comparing the prices...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Cohesion Policy Incentives for Collaborative Industrial Research. The Evaluation of a Smart Specialisation Forerunner Programme

This paper evaluates a program of subsidies for Collaborative Industrial Research (co-) funded by the EU Cohesion Policy in Italy mobilizing over 1 billion euros. This program anticipated in the 2007-2013 funding cycle s...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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

Urban renewal after the Berlin wall: a place-based policy evaluation

We use a quasi-experimental research design to study the effects of a spatially targeted renewal policy implemented in Berlin, Germany, in the aftermath of the city's division during the Cold War period. Our results sugg...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...

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

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Environmental policy and directed technological change: evidence from the European carbon market

This paper investigates the impact of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on technological change, exploiting installations level inclusion criteria to estimate the System's causal impact on firms' paten...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 Fleche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The (Displacement) Effects of Spatially Targeted Enterprise Initiatives: Evidence from UK LEGI

We investigate the impacts of a significant area-based intervention (LEGI) that aimed to increase employment and entrepreneurial activity in 30 disadvantaged areas across England. We examine the spatial pattern of effect...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...

CentrePiece article

Regulatory reform in Greece: the benefits of removing maximum mark-ups

Regulations that impose maximum mark-ups are intended to protect consumers from firms exercising market power. But a study by Christos Genakos and colleagues suggests that they can have the opposite effect: when Greece l...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...

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

The impact of maximum markup regulation on prices

Markup regulation is a common yet understudied type of regulation. We analyze the repeal of maximum wholesale and retail markup regulation in an oligopolistic and vertically non-integrated market. By comparing the prices...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and p...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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Evaluating Spatial Policies

In most countries economic prosperity is very unevenly distributed across space: regions, cities and neighbourhoods seem to be very unequal, whether we look at average earnings, employment, education or almost any other ...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...

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...

Journal article

Educational Research:

Educational attainment across the UK nations: performance, inequality and evidence

Political devolution occurred in the UK in 1998-99, following many years in which some degree of policy administration had been devolved to the four nations. Since devolution, all four countries of the UK have pursued in...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...