Happiness and Productivity

By Andrew J. Oswald, Eugenio Proto, Daniel Sgroi. Journal of Labor Economics, 2015

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some firms say they care about the well-being and “happiness” of their employees. But are such claims hype or scientific good sense? We provide evidence, for a classic piece rate setting, that happiness makes people more productive. In three different styles of experiment, randomly selected individuals are made happier. The treated individuals have approximately 12% greater productivity. A fourth experiment studies major real-world shocks (bereavement and family illness). Lower happiness is systematically associated with lower productivity. These different forms of evidence, with complementary strengths and weaknesses, are consistent with the existence of a causal link between human well-being and human performance.

Subfields: General Decision Sciences, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f38fe24d53bca8e242bbe3a9473bf552b7a6eb14