The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends data to test whether the lockdowns implemented in Europe and America led to...

This paper uses the wellbeing valuation (WV) approach to estimate and monetize the wellbeing impacts of informal care provision on caregivers. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from the U.K., we address two challenging methodological issues related to the economic valuation of...

This paper studies the mental distress caused by bereavement. The largest emotional lossesare from the death of a spouse; the second-worst in severity are the losses from the death ofa child; the third-worst is the death of a parent...

Many recent writings in health policy have proposed that health be valued directly and in monetary terms using the new well-being valuation method. Yet there is currently no clear consensus on what the best measure of individualﾒs experience may be for the evaluation process. To shed light on...

The importance of noncognitive childhood skills in predicting higher wages is well documented in economics. This paper studies the reverse. Using surveys of lottery winners, we analyze the effects of unearned income on the Big Five personality traits. After correcting for potential endogeneity...

This paper tests whether there is a potential payoff to grandparenthood in terms of life satisfaction. Using the new nationwide survey for the UK, which consists of over 5,000 grandparents and 6,000 non-grandparents aged 40 and above, and a flexible multiple-index ordered probit model with...

This paper is an empirical study of slope heterogeneity in job satisfaction. It provides evidence from the generalized ordered probit models that different job characteristics tend to have different distributional impacts on the overall job satisfaction. For instance, standard models tend to...

This paper investigates whether people's ability to withstand and adapt to one of the most important economic shocks – job loss – is determined early on in childhood. Using nationally representative longitudinal data that tracks almost 3,000 children into adulthood, we show that the negative...

We investigated experimentally whether people can be induced to believe in a non-existent expert, and subsequently pay for what can only be described as transparently useless advice about future chance events. Consistent with the theoretical predictions made by Rabin (2002) and Rabin and Vayanos...

Many economists and educators favour public support for education on the premise that education improves the overall well-being of citizens. However, little is known about the causal pathways through which education shapes people's subjective well-being (SWB). This paper explores the direct and...