Happiness matters: productivity gains from subjetive well-being

DiMaria, Charles Henri and Peroni, Chiara and Sarracino, Francesco (2017): Happiness matters: productivity gains from subjetive well-being.

Abstract

This article studies the link between people's subjective well-being, defined as life satisfaction, and productivity in the framework of efficiency analysis. We adopt Data Envelopment Analysis to compute productive efficiency indices using European Social Survey and AMECO data for 20 European countries. While accounting for reverse causality, we find significant efficiency gains when subjective well-being is an input to production. This supports the view that promoting subjective well-being results in higher productivity.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: productivity, subjective well-being, TFP, efficiency gains, life satisfaction, economic growth, DEA.
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E23 - Production; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty > I31 - General Welfare, Well-Being; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity > O47 - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth ; Aggregate Productivity ; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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