We conduct a random-assignment experiment to investigate whether positive affect impacts time preference, where time preference denotes a preference for present over future utility. Our result indicates that, compared to neutral affect, mild positive affect significantly reduces time preference over money. This result is robust to various specification checks, and alternative interpretations of the result are considered. Our result has implications for the effect of happiness on time preference and the role of emotions in economic decision making, in general. Finally, we reconfirm the ubiquity of time preference and start to explore its determinants. (JEL D12, D83, I31)

This paper contributes to the small but growing literature evaluating the health effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In particular, we use data from the National Survey of Families and Households to study the impact of the 1990 federal EITC expansion on several outcomes related to mental health and subjective well-being. The identification strategy relies on a difference-indifferences framework to estimate intent-to-treat effects for the post-reform period. Our results suggest that the 1990 EITC reform generated sizeable health benefits for low-skilled mothers. Such women experienced lower depression symptomatology, an increase in self-reported happiness, and improved self-efficacy relative to their childless counterparts. Consistent with previous work, we find that married mothers captured most of the health benefits, with unmarried mothers' health changing very little following the 1990 EITC reform.

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Experiments have demonstrated that men are more willing to compete than women. We develop a new instrument to "price" willingness to compete. We find that men value a $2.00 winner-take-all payment significantly more (about $0.28 more) than women; and that women require a premium (about 40 percent) to compete. Our new instrument is more sensitive than the traditional binary-choice instrument, and thus, enables us to identify relationships that are not identifiable using the traditional binary-choice instrument. We find that subjects who are the most willing to compete have high ability, higher GPA's (men), and take more STEM courses (women). 1 NV (2007) inspired a series of laboratory experiments to test the robustness and limits of their seminal finding. For example, researchers have (a) manipulated subjects' beliefs by providing subjects with feedback regarding their relative performance (e.g., Cason, Masters, & Sheremeta, 2010; Wozniak, Harbaugh & Mayr, 2014); (b) used tasks that are not stereotypically-male (e.g., Grosse & Riener, 2010; Kamas & Preston, 2009; Wozniak et al., 2014); (c) explicitly controlled for risk preferences (e.g., Cason et. al., 2010; Wozniak et al., 2014); and (d) employed proportional winner-take-all payments (e.g., Cason et. al., 2010). While this body of research has illustrated circumstances under which NV (2007) does not hold, the main finding (that men are significantly more willing than women to compete in stereotypically-male tasks) has been replicated repeatedly (see NV (2011) for a thorough review of the literature).