Topic Well-being

Cognitive Abilities and Economic Preferences: Evidence from Genetic and Behavioral Data

An influential body of economic literature has consistently shown strong associations between cognitive abilities and economic preferences. However, much of this research has overlooked the potential endogeneity of cognitive abilities - an oversight given that these abilities stem from a series of investment decisions influenced by factors likely correlated with economic preferences. To address...

DENeB - Development Economics Seminar Series

The DENeB seminar series gives invited senior researchers the opportunity to present and discuss their current work and is open to everyone interested in ongoing research in development economics. The Development Economics Network Berlin (DENeB) is a network for early career researchers in development economics. The network’s main purpose is to be a platform for knowledge exchange related to...

Life satisfaction has increased in many areas

The Welfare Consequences Of Learning Where One Stands: Evidence from a Large Field Experiment

The seminar will share two connected papers, one newer, and in more need of feedback, than the other. The premise of both is the received wisdom that income rank matters for welfare, in particular life satisfaction. In most discussions, however, income comparisons are limited to the national population and evidence is correlational. In the first paper, we report on an experiment that randomized...

Reversing the Reversal? A Systematic Reassessment and Meta-Analysis of Wellbeing Research

Fierce debate over the feasibility of cardinally measuring utility – or ‘wellbeing’ – with surveys has recently resurfaced. Several prominent papers claimed that when interpreting survey data as strictly ordinal, most of the literature’s results are easily reversed. We systematically assess this claim. To do so, we replicate the universe of wellbeing research published in top economics journals...

Codevelopment of Life Goals and the Big Five Personality Traits across Adulthood and Old Age

Since the new millennium, research in the field of personality development has focused on the stability and change of basic personality traits. Motivational aspects of personality and their longitudinal association with basic traits have received comparably little attention. In this preregistered study, we applied bivariate latent growth curve model to investigated the codevelopment of nine life goals ...

The Well-Being Costs of Informal Caregiving

How does informal care affect caregivers’ well-being? Theories and existing research provide conflicting answers to this question, partly because the temporal processes and conditions under which different aspects of well-being are affected are unknown. Here, we used longitudinal data from Dutch, German, and Australian representative panels (281,884 observations, 28,663 caregivers) to examine theoretically ...

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Pandemic-induced Psychosocial Stress in Different Life Domains among the Working-Age Population

Background Psychosocial stress is considered a risk factor for physical and mental ill-health. Evidence on socioeconomic inequalities with regard to the psychosocial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany is still limited. We aimed to investigate how pandemic-induced psychosocial stress (PIPS) in different life domains differed between socioeconomic groups.MethodsData came from the German ...

Assessing the Measurement Quality of Justice Evaluations of Earnings in Europe

How individuals perceive the fairness of their pay carries profound implications for individuals and society. Perceptions of pay injustice are linked to a spectrum of negative outcomes, including diminished well-being, poor health, increased stress, and depressive symptoms, alongside various detrimental effects in the work domain. Despite the far-reaching impact of these justice evaluations, validity ...

Restrictions to Civil Liberties in a Pandemic and Satisfaction with Democracy

In times of crises, democracies face the challenge of balancing effective interventions with civil liberties. This study examines German states’ responses during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the trade-off between civil liberties and public health. Using state-level variation in mobility restrictions, we employ a difference-in-differences design to show that stay-at-home orders ...