Science rests upon the reliability of peer review. This paper suggests a way to test for bias. It is able to avoid the fallacy – one seen in the popular press and the research literature – that to measure discrimination it is sufficient to study averages within two populations. The paper’s...

I suggest the idea of a reporting function, r(.), from reality to feelings. The ‘happiness’ literature claims we have demonstrated diminishing marginal utility of income. I show not, and that knowing r(.)’s curvature is crucial. A quasi-experiment on heights is studied.

This paper studies the links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness. It uses recent data on a random sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Greater income does not buy more sex, nor more sexual...

This paper documents some of the patterns in modern microeconomic data on young people’s employment, attitudes and entrepreneurial behaviour. Among other sources, the paper uses the Eurobarometer Surveys; the Labour Force Surveys from Canada and the Current Population Survey in the United...

Why do some leaders succeed while others fail? This question is important, but its complexity makes it hard to study systematically. We examine an industry in which there are well-defined objectives, small teams, and exact measures of leaders’ characteristics. We show that a strong predictor...

According to the well-being measure known as the U.N. Human Development Index, Australia now ranks 3rd in the world and higher than all other English-speaking nations. This paper questions that assessment. It reviews work on the economics of happiness, considers implications for policymakers,...

This paper provides evidence for the existence of a wage curve -- a micro-econometric association between the level of pay and the local unemployment rate -- in modern U.S. data. Consistent with recent evidence from more than 40 other countries, the wage curve in the United States has a long-run...

It is commonly claimed in the recent happiness literature in psychology and economics that we have proved diminishing marginal utility of income. This paper suggests that we have not. It draws a distinction between concavity of the utility function and concavity of the reporting function.