340 research outputs found
Limited Self-control, Obesity, and the Loss of Happiness
Is obesity the consequence of an optimally chosen lifestyle or do people consume too much relative to their long-term preferences? The latter perspective accepts that people might face self-control problems when exposed to the immediate gratification from food. We exploit unique survey data for Switzerland in multinomial logit and ordered probit regressions to study (i) the covariates of obesity including indicators of self-control and (ii) the consequences of obesity on the subjective well-being of people with limited willpower. Our main finding is that obesity decreases the well-being of individuals who report having limited self-control, but not otherwise. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Rain, emotions and voting for the Status Quo
Do emotions affect the decision between change and the status quo? We exploit exogenous variation in emotions caused by rain and analyze data on more than 400 ballot propositions in Switzerland for the years 1958 to 2014 to address this question. The empirical tests are based on administrative ballot outcomes and individual postvote survey data. We find that rain decreases the share of votes for a change. Our robustness checks suggest that changes in the composition of the electorate or changes in information acquisition do not drive this result. In addition, we provide evidence that rain might have altered the outcome of several high-stake votes. We discuss the psychological mechanism and document that rain reduces the willingness to take risks, a pattern that is consistent with the observed reduction in the support of change
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
Overstrained citizens? The number of ballot propositions and the quality of the decision process in direct democracy
We study how the number of ballot propositions affects the quality of decision making in direct democracy, as reflected in citizens` knowledge, voting behavior, and attitudes toward democracy. Using three comprehensive data sets from Switzerland with over 3,500 propositions, we exploit variation in the number of federal and cantonal propositions. Voters know the most about the content of federal propositions when they are exclusively presented and less with a high number of concurrent cantonal propositions on the ballot. Across other outcomes we find no consistent indications that - for the observed variation in the exposure to popular votes - a high number of propositions impedes the quality of decision making in Swiss federal direct democracy. In the medium to longer term, more federal propositions on the ballot rather relate to higher perceived political influence and satisfaction with democracy
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
Rain, Emotions and Voting for the Status Quo
Do emotions aect the decision between change and the status quo? We exploit exogenous variation in emotions caused by rain and analyze data on more than 870,000 municipal vote outcomes in Switzerland to address this question. The empirical tests are based on administrative ballot outcomes and individual postvote survey data. We find that rain decreases the share of votes for political change. Our robustness checks suggest that this finding is not driven by changes in the composition of the electorate and changes in information acquisition. In addition, we provide evidence that rain might have altered the outcome of several high-stake votes. We discuss the psychological mechanism and document that rain reduces the willingness to take risks, a pattern that is consistent with the observed reduction in the support for change
The use of happiness research for public policy
Research on happiness tends to follow a "benevolent dictator" approach where politicians pursue people's happiness. This paper takes an antithetic approach based on the insights of public choice theory. First, we inquire how the results of happiness research may be used to improve the choice of institutions. Second, we show that the policy approach matters for the choice of research questions and the kind of knowledge happiness research aims to provide. Third, we emphasize that there is no shortcut to an optimal policy maximizing some happiness indicator or social welfare function since governments have an incentive to manipulate this indicator
Overstrained Citizens?
We study how the number of ballot propositions affects the quality of decision making in direct democracy, as reflected in citizens’ knowledge, voting behavior, and attitudes toward democracy. Using three comprehensive data sets from Switzerland with over 3,500 propositions, we exploit variation in the number of federal propositions and plausibly exogenous variation in the number of cantonal propositions. Only with a relatively high number of propositions on the ballot do voters have less knowledge about federal propositions. Otherwise, we find no indication that the number of ballot propositions impedes the quality of decision making in direct democracy. For instance, a higher number of propositions does not lead more voters to support proposals endorsed by pole parties. If anything, having more federal propositions on the ballot relates to higher perceived political influence and satisfaction with democracy
Cosmoglobe DR1. III. First full-sky model of polarized synchrotron emission from all WMAP and Planck LFI data
We present the first model of full-sky polarized synchrotron emission that is
derived from all WMAP and Planck LFI frequency maps. The basis of this analysis
is the set of end-to-end reprocessed Cosmoglobe Data Release 1 sky maps
presented in a companion paper, which have significantly lower instrumental
systematics than the legacy products from each experiment. We find that the
resulting polarized synchrotron amplitude map has an average noise rms of
at 30 GHz and FWHM, which is 30% lower than
the recently released BeyondPlanck model that included only LFI+WMAP Ka-V data,
and 29% lower than the WMAP K-band map alone. The mean -to- power
spectrum ratio is , with amplitudes consistent with those measured
previously by Planck and QUIJOTE. Assuming a power law model for the
synchrotron spectral energy distribution, and using the -- plot method,
we find a full-sky inverse noise-variance weighted mean of
between Cosmoglobe DR1 K-band and 30 GHz, in
good agreement with previous estimates. In summary, the novel Cosmoglobe DR1
synchrotron model is both more sensitive and systematically cleaner than
similar previous models, and it has a more complete error description that is
defined by a set of Monte Carlo posterior samples. We believe that these
products are preferable over previous Planck and WMAP products for all
synchrotron-related scientific applications, including simulation, forecasting
and component separation.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, submitted to A&
Cosmoglobe: Towards end-to-end CMB cosmological parameter estimation without likelihood approximations
We implement support for a cosmological parameter estimation algorithm as
proposed by Racine et al. (2016) in Commander, and quantify its computational
efficiency and cost. For a semi-realistic simulation similar to Planck LFI 70
GHz, we find that the computational cost of producing one single sample is
about 60 CPU-hours and that the typical Markov chain correlation length is
100 samples. The net effective cost per independent sample is 6 000
CPU-hours, in comparison with all low-level processing costs of 812 CPU-hours
for Planck LFI and WMAP in Cosmoglobe Data Release 1. Thus, although
technically possible to run already in its current state, future work should
aim to reduce the effective cost per independent sample by at least one order
of magnitude to avoid excessive runtimes, for instance through multi-grid
preconditioners and/or derivative-based Markov chain sampling schemes. This
work demonstrates the computational feasibility of true Bayesian cosmological
parameter estimation with end-to-end error propagation for high-precision CMB
experiments without likelihood approximations, but it also highlights the need
for additional optimizations before it is ready for full production-level
analysis.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to A&
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