Happiness and Economic Performance

Oswald, Andrew J.

doi:10.1111/1468-0297.00260

Cited by 403 publications

(261 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…An early meta-analysis (Haring, Stock, & Okun, 1984) found that males tend to report better well-being, while longitudinal studies also concluded that marriage supported psychological well-being (Kim & McKenry, 2002;Mentzakis, McNamee, Ryan, & Sutton, 2011). Similarly, increased well-being is commonly associated with higher absolute and relative income (Clark & Oswald, 1996;Mentzakis & Moro, 2009;Oswald, 1997), although consistent indicators for the latter are hard to identify. Finally, a strong positive link between better physical and mental health is reported consistently in 9 previous studies (Clark & Oswald, 2002;Mentzakis, 2011), although potential adaptation effects cannot be controlled for in our cross-sectional setting (Groot, 2000;Heyink, 1993).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the causal effect of alcohol consumption on well-being for a cross-section of 9 former Soviet Union countries

Mentzakis

Suhrcke

Roberts

et al. 2013

Social Science & Medicine

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While the adverse health and economic consequences attributable to alcohol consumption are widely acknowledged, its impact on psychological wellbeing is less well understood. This is to a large extent due to the challenge of establishing causal effects of alcohol consumption when using standard single-equation econometric analyses. Using a unique dataset collected in 2010/11 of 18000 individuals and also community characteristics from nine countries of the former Soviet Union, a region with a major burden of alcohol related ill health, we address this problem by employing an instrumental variable approach to identify any causal effects of alcohol consumption on mental wellbeing. The availability of 24-hour alcohol sales outlets in the neighbourhood of the individuals is used as an instrument, based on theoretical reasoning and statistical testing of its validity. We find that increased alcohol consumption decreases well-being and that ignoring endogeneity leads to underestimation of this effect. This finding adds a further and previously under-appreciated dimension to the expected benefits that could be achieved with more effective alcohol policy in this region.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the causal effect of alcohol consumption on well-being for a cross-section of 9 former Soviet Union countries

Mentzakis

Suhrcke

Roberts

et al. 2013

Social Science & Medicine

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“…Subjective questions on self-reported well-being have been used in economics to understand and explore a large range of interesting topics, such as unemployment, health, job situation, and income (Blanchflower and Oswald, 2004;Clark and Oswald, 1994;DiTella et al, 2001;Easterlin, 2001;Ferreri-Carbonell, 2005;Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters, 2004;Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Van Praag, 2002;Frey and Stutzer, 2002;Frijters et al, 2004;Oswald, 1997;Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2004). In doing so, economists take individuals answer to well-being questions as a proxy to measure utility (see, e.g.…”

Section: The Well-being Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monetary valuation of informal care: the well‐being valuation method

2007

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SUMMARYThis paper estimates the monetary value of providing informal care by means of a well-being valuation method. This is done by assessing the compensating variation necessary to maintain the same level of well-being after an informal caregiver provides an extra hour of informal care. The informal caregiver's well-being is proxied by the answer to two subjective well-being questions that were posed in a questionnaire answered by 865 Dutch informal caregivers between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. In the econometric analysis, a distinction is made between the care recipients who are and the ones who are not a family member of the informal caregiver. The results indicate that an extra hour of informal care is worth about 9 or 10 Euros. This equals 8 or 9 Euros if the care recipient is a family member and about 7 or 9 Euros if not. When applying the contingent valuation method to the same sample, the value obtained was 10.52 Euros per hour. This paper concludes that the well-being valuation method is a useful complement to the more traditional valuation methods in the health economics literature in general and more particularly for the economic valuation of informal care: it includes all costs and effects associated with providing care from the perspective of the informal caregiver, it is relatively cheap to implement, and it offers an additional possibility to determine the convergent validity of the different monetary valuation methods.

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“…Oswald (1997). Further empirical evidence on the importance of relative concerns can be found in Robert H. Frank (1985a); Huib van de Stadt et al (1985); Andrew E. Clark and Andrew J.…”

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confidence: 98%

Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status

Hopkins

Kornienko

2004

American Economic Review

350

107

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If individuals care about their status, defined as their rank in the distribution of consumption of one "positional" good, then the consumer's problem is strategic as her utility depends on the consumption choices of others. In the symmetric Nash equilibrium, each individual spends an inefficiently high amount on the status good. Using techniques from auction theory, we analyze the effects of exogenous changes in the distribution of income. In a richer society, almost all individuals spend more on conspicuous consumption, and individual utility is lower at each income level. In a more equal society, the poor are worse off.

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Happiness and Economic Performance

Cited by 403 publications

References 35 publications

Estimating the causal effect of alcohol consumption on well-being for a cross-section of 9 former Soviet Union countries

Estimating the causal effect of alcohol consumption on well-being for a cross-section of 9 former Soviet Union countries

Monetary valuation of informal care: the well‐being valuation method

Running to Keep in the Same Place: Consumer Choice as a Game of Status

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