Nozick's "utility monster" - a being who is more efficient than other persons at transforming resources into well-being - is often regarded as deeply impossible, on the ground of the incapacity of a single person to have a life that is better than a large number of other lives. In this article,...

We are the first to examine the impact of robotization on work meaningfulness and autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are key for motivation and human flourishing at work. Using worker-level data from 13 industries in 20 European countries and OLS and instrumental variables estimations,...

We know that when collective emotions are prolonged, it leads not only to action (which could be negative) but also to the formation of identity, culture, or an emotional climate. Therefore, policymakers must understand how collective emotions react to macro-level shocks to mitigate potentially...

Housing is a basic need and is intricately connected to a household's health and wellness. The current pandemic has exposed the housing vulnerability for certain subgroups of the population and further jeopardized these household's health and stability. Using the Household Pulse Survey launched...

This study is one of the first investigating the causal evidence of the morbidity costs of fine particulates (PM2.5) for all age cohorts in a developing country, using individual-level health spending data from a basic medical insurance program in Wuhan, China. Our instrumental variable (IV)...

In many societies, parents prefer sons over daughters, but the well-being effects of child gender, especially in later life, are less studied. Using the latest two waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this paper evaluates the impacts of having daughters on older...

Vietnam is widely regarded as a success story for its impressive economic growth and poverty reduction in the last few decades. Yet, recent evidence indicates that the country's economic growth has not been uniform. Compiling and analyzing new extensive province-level data from the Vietnam...

This article examines the intertwining relationship between informality and education-occupation mismatch (EOM) and the consequent impact on the workers' wages. In particular, we discuss two issues - first, the relative importance of informality and education-occupation mismatch in determining...

Relationships have changed dramatically in the last fifty years. Fewer couples are marrying, more are cohabiting. Reasons for this shift abound, but the shift may have consequences of its own. A number of models predict that those cohabiting will specialize less than those marrying. Panel data...

This paper uses German survey data on married couples to examine the association of performance pay at work and subsequent separation or divorce. Despite extensive controls, performance pay remains associated with an increased probability of separation or divorce. Yet, the results are entirely...