Subjective Well-Being and Public Policy

Measures of subjective well-being have gained substantial attention in economics as quantitative approximations of individual welfare. They allow researchers to study relevant determinants of welfare on an individual as well as on a societal level. These determinants might not to be easily detectable in observable behavior. By referring to the recent well-being literature, we provide a selection of determinants of well-being that are important for public policy and show how the analysis of subjective well-being is applied as a complementary analytical tool for policy evaluation. We highlight the use of these measures for guiding public policy in areas that might involve suboptimal behavior. We also discuss some challenges for future research that are associated with the choice of evaluation metrics, the role of aspiration and adaption in evaluations, and utility misprediction

Smoking bans, cigarette prices and life satisfaction

The consequences of tobacco control policies for individual welfare are difficult to assess. We therefore evaluate the impact of smoking bans and cigarette prices on subjective wellbeing by analyzing data for 40 European countries and regions between 1990 and 2011. We exploit the staggered introduction of bans and apply an imputation strategy to study the effect of anti-smoking policies on people with different propensities to smoke. We find that higher cigarette prices reduce the life satisfaction of likely smokers. Overall, smoking bans are not related to subjective well-being, but increase the life satisfaction of smokers who recently failed to quit smoking. The latter finding is consistent with cue-triggered models of addiction and the idea of bans as self-control devices

Does the Dream of Home Ownership Rest upon Biased Beliefs? A Test Based on Predicted and Realized Life Satisfaction

The belief that home ownership makes people happy is probably one of the most widespread intuitive theories of happiness. However, whether it is accurate is an open question. Based on individual panel data, we explore whether home buyers systematically overestimate the life satisfaction associated with living in their privately owned property. To identify potential prediction errors, we compare people’s forecasts of their life satisfaction in five years’ time with their current realizations. We find that, while moving into a purchased dwelling is associated with higher life satisfaction, people systematically overestimate the long-term satisfaction gain. The misprediction therein is driven by people who follow extrinsically-oriented life goals, highlighting biased beliefs regarding own preferences as a relevant mechanism in the prediction errors

Medical marijuana laws and mental health in the United States

The consequences of legal access to medical marijuana for individual welfare are a matter of controversy. We contribute to the ongoing discussion by evaluating the impact of the staggered introduction and extension of medical marijuana laws across US states on self-reported mental health. Our main analysis is based on BRFSS survey data from more than six million respondents between 1993 and 2015. On average, we find that medical marijuana laws lead to a reduction in the self-reported number of days with mental health problems. Reductions are largest for individuals with high propensities to consume marijuana for medical purposes and people who are likely to suffer from chronic pain. Moreover, the introduction of prescription drug monitoring programs lead to a reduction in bad mental health days only in states that allow medical marijuana

Copper pumping ATPases: Common concepts in bacteria and man

AbstractRecently, four genes encoding putative copper pumping ATPases have been cloned from widely different sources: two genes from Enterococcus hirae that are involved in copper metabolism and two human genes that are defective in the copper-related Wilson and Menkes disease. The predicted gene products are P-type ATPases. They exhibit extensive sequence similarity and appear to be members of a new class of ATP driven copper pumps involved in the regulation of cellular copper

Tobacco sales prohibition and teen smoking

We evaluate one of the most prevalent prohibitory policies: banning the sales of tobacco to teens. We exploit the staggered introduction of sales bans across Switzerland and analyze rich data from 2001 to 2016. The estimates do not indicate an immediate or long-run systematic reduction in the overall prevalence of smoking because of sales bans. We also examine a range of behavioral mechanisms that are key to understand the consequences of prohibitory policies such as habit formation, social appeal of smoking, circumvention behavior, or risk perceptions. Among others, we find that teens circumvent the bans by getting cigarettes from peers. Moreover, teens consider smokers less cool when a sales ban is in place, but they do not consider smoking more dangerous

Tobacco Sales Prohibition and Teen Smoking

We evaluate one of the most prevalent prohibitory policies: banning the sales of tobacco to teens. We exploit the staggered introduction of sales bans across Switzerland and the European Union from 1990 to 2016. The estimates indicate a less than 1 percentage point reduction in teen smoking because of the bans. The reduction is substantially lower than the 5 percentage point reduction expected by health officials. We examine additional outcomes relevant to assessing any prohibitory policy. We find that teens circumvent the bans through peers. Moreover, they consider smokers less cool but do not think smoking is more dangerous

Tobacco Control Policies and Smoking Behavior in Europe: More Than Trends?

In many European countries, there is an unmissable trend towards stricter tobacco control policies and a parallel reduction in the prevalence of smoking. The extent to which policies promote this latter trend, however, is less clear. We therefore analyze the staggered introductions of smoking bans and the variation in cigarette taxes over more than twenty years. After taking into account unobserved country- and time-specic eects as well as country-specic trends, we nd no clear evidence that smoking bans are associated with lower levels of smoking. In contrast, higher cigarette prices tend to be negatively related to smoking, in particular for men and people under the age of 30. However, price elasticities are small. Overall, the results suggest that only about one sixth of the decline in the prevalence of smoking in Europe can be explained by our policy variables

Smoking bans, cigarette prices and life satisfaction

The consequences of tobacco control policies for individual welfare are difficult to assess, even more so when related consumption choices challenge people's willpower. We therefore evaluate the impact of smoking bans and cigarette prices on subjective well-being by analyzing data for 40 European countries and regions between 1990 and 2011. We exploit the staggered introduction of bans and apply an imputation strategy to study the effect of anti-smoking policies on people with different propensities to smoke. We find that higher cigarette prices reduce the life satisfaction of likely smokers. Overall, smoking bans are barely related to subjective well-being, but increase the life satisfaction of smokers who would like to quit smoking. The latter finding is consistent with cue-triggered models of addiction and the idea of bans as self-control devices