Humans run on a fuel called food. Yet economists and other social scientists rarely study what people eat. We provide simple evidence consistent with the existence of a link between the consumption of fruit and vegetables and high well-being. In cross-sectional data, happiness and mental health...

In surveys of well-being, countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands emerge as particularly happy while nations like Germany and Italy report lower levels of happiness. But are these kinds of findings credible? This paper provides some evidence that the answer is yes. Using data on 16...

This paper estimates micro-econometric happiness equations for the United States and Great Britain. Reported levels of wellbeing have declined over the last quarter of a century in the US; life satisfaction has run approximately flat through time in Britain. These findings are consistent with...

A modern statistical literature argues that countries such as Denmark are particularly happy while nations like East Germany are not. Are such claims credible? The paper explores this by building on two ideas. The first is that psychological well-being and high blood-pressure are thought by...

This paper is a continuation of results in Blanchflower and Oswald (2008). It provides new evidence that well-being follows a curve through life. We use data on half a million randomly sampled individuals across eight major European nations. Importantly, we show that in this set of countries...

We present evidence that psychological well-being is U-shaped through life. A difficulty with research on this issue is that there are likely to be omitted cohort effects (earlier generations may have been born in, say, particularly good or bad times). First, using data on 500,000 randomly...

The paper studies the micro-economics of inflation taxes and marginal employment subsidies. It proves under very weak assumptions (i) an inflation tax will reduce the long-run equilibrium wage or price and (ii) that a marginal employment subsidy will raise the long-run equilibrium employment...

If a nation's economic performance improves, how much extra happiness does that buy its citizens? Most public debate assumes - without real evidence - that the answer is a lot. This paper examines the question by using information on well-being in Western countries. The data are of four kinds :...

Is the labor market well-approximated by a competitive model or is wage determination instead a kind of non-competitive rent-sharing? This unsettles question lies at the heart of labor economics and macroeconomics. The paper argues that new research -- drawing upon data of a kind not available...

Many governments wish to assess the quality of their universities. A prominent example is the UK’s new Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. In the REF, peer-review panels will be provided with information on publications and citations. This paper suggests a way in which panels could...