Happiness and voting : evidence from four decades of elections in Europe
Name
1251804810-MIT.pdf
Size
463.87 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Ward, George(Scientist in business management)Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Advisor(s)
Erin L. Kelly.
Alternative Title
Evidence from four decades of elections in Europe
Date Issued
2021
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
There is a growing interest among policymakers in the use of subjective well-being (or \happiness") data to measure societal progress, as well as to inform and evaluate public policy. Yet despite a sharp rise in the supply of well-being-based policymaking, it remains unclear whether there is any electoral demand for it. In this paper, I study a long-run panel of general elections in Europe and nd that well-being is a strong predictor of election results. National measures of subjective well-being are able to explain more of the variance in governing party vote share than standard macroeconomic indicators typically used in the economic voting literature. Consistent results are found at the individual level when considering subjective well-being and voting intentions, both in cross-sectional and panel analyses.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Management Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, February, 2021
Cataloged from the official PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 21-25).
Subjects
Sloan School of Management.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
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