The paper studies the micro-economics of inflation taxes and marginal employment subsidies. It proves under very weak assumptions (i) an inflation tax will reduce the long-run equilibrium wage or price and (ii) that a marginal employment subsidy will raise the long-run equilibrium employment...

If a nation's economic performance improves, how much extra happiness does that buy its citizens? Most public debate assumes - without real evidence - that the answer is a lot. This paper examines the question by using information on well-being in Western countries. The data are of four kinds :...

Is the labor market well-approximated by a competitive model or is wage determination instead a kind of non-competitive rent-sharing? This unsettles question lies at the heart of labor economics and macroeconomics. The paper argues that new research -- drawing upon data of a kind not available...

Understanding the reasons why individuals take risks, particularly unnecessary risks, remains an important question in economics. We provide the first evidence of a powerful connection between happiness and risk-avoidance. Using data on 300,000 Americans, we demonstrate that happier individuals...

Many governments wish to assess the quality of their universities. A prominent example is the UK’s new Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. In the REF, peer-review panels will be provided with information on publications and citations. This paper suggests a way in which panels could...

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 to be happier. However, relatively little attention has been paid to...

Humans run on a fuel called food. Yet economists and other social scientists rarely study what people eat. We provide simple evidence consistent with the existence of a link between the consumption of fruit and vegetables and high well-being. In cross-sectional data, happiness and mental health...

Many environmentalists have not yet discovered and understood the value to them of a new research literature. That literature is the economics of happiness. It offers a potentially important tool for future policy debate. In particular, this literature offers a defensible way to calculate the...

We live in a high-divorce age. Parents worry about the possibility of negative effects upon their children. This paper tests whether recent parental-divorce has deleterious consequences for grown children. Under controlled conditions, it measures students’ happiness with life, and their...

Economists and behavioural scientists are beginning to make extensive use of measures of subjective well-being, and such data are potentially of value to policy-makers. A particularly famous difficulty is that of “priming”: if the order or nature of survey questions changes people’s likely...