Happiness Economics from 35,000 Feet

By G. MacKerron. 2012

340 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The economics of happiness, or subjective well being, is an expanding field, with a growing number of applied papers reporting empirical associations between happiness and other variables. This paper takes a broad view of the topic, aiming to provide an outline of the literature in relation to happiness economics' origins, definitions, theory, methods, applications, critiques, relations with other areas of economic research, political and policy connections, and promising directions for future inquiry.

Subfields: Accounting, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b56a5abf588ac1a54f6e958ebba125261b7b6c62

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Citations in the corpus

What makes work meaningful and why economists should care about it (2020, background): “In contrast, the subjective well-being approach assumes that people themselves are the best judges of their working and living environments (Graham et al., 2018; Graham and Nikolova, 2015; MacKerron, 2012; OECD, 2013; Stone and Mackie, 2014).”
The relationship between well-being and commuting revisited: Does the choice of methodology matter? (2014, background): “Summaries and overviews of this rapidly expanding literature include: Frey and Stutzer (2002a), Frey and Stutzer (2002b), Layard (2005), Kahneman and Krueger (2006), Di Tella and MacCulloch (2006), Clark et al. (2008), Dolan et al. (2008), Stutzer and Frey (2010) and MacKerron (2011).”
Life Satisfaction and Air Quality in Europe (2012, background): “…has increased rapidly over the last decade (for overviews see, e.g., Frey and Stutzer, 2002; Dolan et al., 2008; van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2008; MacKerron, 2011).1 This new line of research has shown that many factors beyond income significantly affect people’s subjective…”
Temperature and temperament: Evidence from Twitter (2020, methodology): “Kahneman and Krueger (2006) and Mackerron (2012) discuss the merits and weaknesses of these studies: a common challenge is that measurements of SWB are by definition subjective and likely to include unobserved variation across time and space.”
The Economics of Happiness (2021, methodology): “As such, Si – Sk = y(Wi , Wk ), where y(Wi , Wk ) is assumed to be: Wi - Wk and Si – Sk = Wi – Wk Estimating Equation (2) using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), a common practice in the literature, requires Assumption 3 about cardinality (MacKerron, 2012).”
Does commuting matter to subjective well-being? (2018, background): “1 Summaries and overviews of this rapidly expanding literature include: Frey and Stutzer (2000, 2002a,b), Layard (2005), Kahneman and Krueger (2006), Di Tella and MacCulloch (2006), Clark et al. (2008), Dolan et al. (2008), Stutzer and Frey (2010), and MacKerron (2012).”
Does happiness data say urban parks are worth it? (2018, background): “Economists and psychologists have recently paid growing attention to happiness research (Diener & Seligman, 2002; Dolan, Peasgood, & White, 2008; Frey & Stutzer, 2002; MacKerron, 2012).”
Happiness is greater in natural environments (2013, methodology): “A more detailed treatment of the methods outlined in this section is provided by MacKerron (2012a).”
Public Greenspace and Life Satisfaction in Urban Australia (2014, background): “A comprehensive review of life satisfaction or happiness in economics is provided by Frey and Stutzer (2002a, b) and MacKerron (2011).”
How does neighborhood design affect life satisfaction? Evidence from Twin Cities (2016, result): “Education, household income, and the number of vehicles in the household are positively associated with life satisfaction, also consistent with previous studies (Blanchflower and Oswald, 2004; MacKerron, 2012).”
The Concept of Subjective Well-being in Housing Research (2017, neutral): “Nakazato et al. (2011) and Foye (2016) discuss theories of adaptation in relation to improvements in living conditions and increases in living space, respectively.”
Subjective well-being and engagement in arts, culture and sport (2017, background): “The extant literature has centred on improving our understanding of: (1) what individuals value and; (2) the factors affecting their well-being (see Clark et al. 2008; Dolan et al. 2008; MacKerron 2012).”