interesting piece in the new republic on the anti-freakonomics movement. bonus: intra-department squabbles. great gossip. if you care about brangelina's latest adoption, go somewhere else -- this involves one nobel winner dispargaring the research of his colleague. awesome.
many of you may have seen this before, but it is still a great quote.
If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.
-J.M. Keynes
plus, then i would get fridays off.
If You’ve Got the Money, Honey, You May Be a Little Bit Happier:
Money can’t buy happiness, or so the saying goes. But it may not be true.
Ed Diener, a University of Illinois psychologist, said that the connection was complex but that very rich people rated substantially higher in satisfaction with life than very poor people did, even within wealthy nations.
“There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness,” said Andrew Oswald, an economist with the University of Warwick, in England. The debate, he said, is how strong the effect is.
Professor Oswald reported a study of Britons who won $2,000 to $250,000 in a lottery. They showed an increase in happiness averaging just more than a point on a 36-point scale two years later.
Daniel Kahneman, an economist at Princeton and a winner of the Nobel in economic science, and colleagues declared that the notion that making a lot of money would produce a good overall mood was “mostly illusory.”
Correction: a psychologist who studies economic issues.
In one study, they said, people with household incomes of $90,000 or more were only slightly more likely to call themselves very happy over all than were people from households making $50,000 to $89,999 — 43 percent to 42 percent. (Members of the first group were nearly twice as likely to be “very happy” as people from households with incomes below $20,000.)
Other studies, rather than asking for a summary estimate of happiness, followed people and repeatedly recorded their feelings. These studies show a smaller effect of income on happiness, Professor Kahneman and his colleagues said.
There is another twist to the story of money and happiness. Even though people who make $150,000 are considerably happier than those who make $40,000, it is not clear why, said Richard E. Lucas, a psychologist at Michigan State University.
Does money make someone happier? Or does being happier allow someone to earn more money?
In any case, researchers say money’s effect is small. “It’s much better advice, if you’re looking for happiness in life, to try to find the right husband or wife rather than trying to double your salary,” Professor Oswald said.
OK. Time for an ignorant question. Do the money and happiness studies control for hours worked?
a recent NBER working paper finds that binge drinking leads to higher wages in men (but no effect in women). the authors conjecture that
binge drinking conveys unobserved social skills that are rewarded by employers.
the truth is, i knew this in high school, and was investing in my future wages. a lot.
I was sent a paper to referee awhile back and given a mid-October deadline. I found some time last weekend to read the paper and wrote the review earlier this week after the kids had gone to bed. Next, I went to the journal's website to submit the review, logged in with the user name and password that they had sent me and looked for the paper number. Hmmm. Not there.
So, I emailed the managing editor the review and my recommendation. Next morning, I get a return email thanking me for the review, it will be helpful to the authors as they go about revising the paper, etc. And, well, the reason you couldn't find the paper on the website was because the editor rejected the paper yesterday.
Argggghhhhh!
Next time, at least with this journal, I'm waiting until after the deadline to even read the paper.
