We explore the relationships between subjective well-being and income, as seen across individuals within a given country, between countries in a given year, and as a country grows through time. We show that richer individuals in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than are poorer...

An increase in the household debt to GDP ratio in the medium run predicts lower subsequent GDP growth, higher unemployment, and negative growth forecasting errors in a panel of 30 countries from 1960 to 2012. Consistent with the "credit supply hypothesis," we show that low mortgage spreads...

Why are people in the richest countries of the world so much richer today than 100 years ago? And why are some countries so much richer than others? Questions such as these define the field of economic growth. This paper documents the facts that underlie these questions. How much richer are we...

Concerns about the quality of China's official GDP statistics have been a perennial question in understanding its economic dynamics. We use data on satellite-recorded nighttime lights as an independent benchmark for comparing various published indicators of the state of the Chinese economy....

The problems involved in estimating real output that I discuss in this paper cause the official government statistics to underestimate of the rates of growth of real GDP, real personal income, and productivity. That underestimation is important not just to economists trying to understand where...