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 London, Paris, and Berlin during the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013. We show...

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 inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom...

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 inference, the magnitude of the effects is equivalent to moving from the bottom...

This paper shows that job loss is associated with a fall in subjective well-being (SWB). It then looks at how this change in SWB predicts job search and unemployment duration. The findings suggest that those who report feeling hurt by unemployment have shorter unemployment durations. Men who...

Based on OECD evidence, equity/housing-price busts and credit crunches are followed by substantial increases in public consumption. These increases in unproductive public spending lead to increases in distortionary marginal taxes, a policy in sharp contrast with presumably optimal Keynesian...

This paper draws on both successful and failing cases of industrialization in China to analyse the role of local governments in fostering the growth of light manufacturing. The broad spectrum of support types and the intimate knowledge of enterprise conditions by these local governments make...

Since 1986, Vietnam has moved from a centrally planned towards a market-oriented system through several major economic and trade reforms. First positive results of the reform process became visible in the early 1990s when poverty declined significantly. The Vietnamese agricultural sector has...