Happiness matters: the role of well-being in productivity

Charles-Henri DiMaria, Chiara Peroni () and Francesco Sarracino

Department of Economics University of Siena from Department of Economics, University of Siena

Abstract: This article is about the link between people’s subjective well-being, defined as an evaluation of one’s own life, and productivity. Our aim is to test the hypothesis that subjective well-being contributes to productivity using a two step approach: first, we establish whether subjectivewell-being can be a candidate variable to study Total Factor Productivity; second, we assess how much subjective well-being contributes to productivity at aggregate level through efficiency gains. We adopt Data Envelopment Analysis to compute total factor productivity and efficiency indices using European Social Survey and AMECO data for 20 European countries. Results show that subjective well-being is an input and not an output to production.

Keywords: productivity; subjective well-being; TFP; efficiency gains; life satisfaction; economic growth; DEA. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E23 I31 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-eur, nep-gro, nep-hap, nep-hpe, nep-hrm and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Happiness matters: the role of well-being in productivity (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usi:wpaper:699

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