The "Easterlin paradox" suggests that there is no link between a society's economic development and its average level of happiness. We re-assess this paradox analyzing multiple rich datasets spanning many decades. Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive...

We consider the effects of the financial crisis and subsequent recession on world labour markets. It begins by cataloguing the adverse effects on output of the sudden collapse in demand brought about by the financial crisis in what has come to be called the Great Recession. Next we look at the...

Do generations growing up during recessions have different socio-economic beliefs than generations growing up in good times? We study the relationship between recessions and beliefs by matching macroeconomic shocks during early adulthood with self-reported answers from the General Social Survey....

This paper examines the properties of instrumental variables (IV) applied to models with essential heterogeneity, that is, models where responses to interventions are heterogeneous and agents adopt treatments (participate in programs) with at least partial knowledge of their idiosyncratic...

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by export price increases (trading gains) rather than export...

Micro-based and macro-based approaches have been used to assess the effects of health on economic growth. Micro-based approaches aggregate the return on individual health from Mincerian wage regressions to derive the macroeconomic effects of population health. Macro-based approaches estimate a...

This paper connects two salient economic features: (i) Fiscal shocks have asymmetric effects across business cycle phases (Gechert et al., 2019); (ii) Okun's coefficient is time varying and may be unstable. The intertwined dynamic behavior of fiscal shocks and unemployment-output trade-offs are...

Prior to 2020, the Great Recession was the most important macroeconomic shock to the United States economy in generations. Millions lost jobs and homes. At its peak, one in ten workers who wanted a job could not find one. On an annual basis, the economy contracted by more than it had since the...

If society's goal is to increase people's feelings of well-being, economic growth in itself will not do the job. Full employment and a generous and comprehensive social safety net do increase happiness. Such policies are arguably affordable not only in higher income nations but also in countries...