From 1940 to 1990, a 10 percent increase in a metropolitan area's concentration of college-educated residents was associated with a .8 percent increase in subsequent employment growth. Instrumental variables estimates support a causal relationship between college graduates and employment growth,...

What utility notion—e.g., flow/lifetime, self/family-centered—do self-reported well-being (SWB) questions measure? First, we clarify the theoretical assumptions underlying existing applications regarding the (i) life domains, (ii) time horizons, and (iii) other-regarding preferences captured...

Happiness data--survey respondents' self-reported well-being (SWB)--have become increasingly common in economics research, with recent calls to use them in policymaking. Researchers have used SWB data in novel ways, for example to learn about welfare or preferences when choice data are...

Analyses of self-reported-well-being (SWB) survey data may be confounded if people use response scales differently. We use calibration questions, designed to have the same objective answer across respondents, to measure dimensional (i.e., specific to an SWB dimension) and general (i.e., common...

We join the call for governments to routinely collect survey-based measures of self-reported wellbeing and for researchers to study them. We list a number of challenges that have to be overcome in order for these measures to eventually achieve a status competitive with traditional economic...