Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the impact of the Great Recession on subjective well-being (as measured by life satisfaction) and attempt to identify disparate effects by age. We find that those...

Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the impact of the Great Recession on subjective well-being (as measured by life satisfaction) and attempt to identify disparate effects by age. We find that those...

U.S. income inequality has risen dramatically in recent decades. Researchers consistently find that greater income inequality measured at the state or national level is associated with diminished subjective well-being (SWB) in the U.S. We conduct the first multi-scale analysis (i.e., at the...

Economics students have been shown to exhibit more selfishness than other students. Because the literature identifies the impact of long-term exposure to economics instruction (e.g., taking a course), it cannot isolate the specific course content responsible; nor can selection, peer effects, or...

In this paper, we use stated satisfaction to estimate social preferences: subjects report their satisfaction with payment-profiles that hold their own payment constant while varying another subject's payment. This approach yields significant support for the inequity aversion model of Fehr and...

The recent surge in analyses of subjective well-being (SWB) and the economics of happiness using large observational datasets has generated stylized facts about the relationship between SWB and various correlates. Because such studies are mostly concerned with the determinants of SWB, the...

The median income of Asian households is the highest of all racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. In a laboratory experiment, we examine whether Asians are more willing to compete and have greater competitive preferences than non-Asians. Both with and without controls for performance, performance...