2026-09-20T22:02:03Zhttps://dspace.mit.edu/server/oai/requestoai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/1307402024-10-17T17:36:51Zcom_1721.1_7582com_1721.1_7581col_1721.1_131023
Erin L. Kelly.
Ward, George(Scientist in business management)Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Sloan School of Management.
Sloan School of Management
e------
2021-05-24T19:53:31Z
2021-05-24T19:53:31Z
2021
2021
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130740
1251804810
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).
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.
by George Ward.
S.M. in Management Research
S.M. in Management Research Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management
51 pages
eng
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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.
http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
Sloan School of Management.
Happiness and voting : evidence from four decades of elections in Europe
Evidence from four decades of elections in Europe
Thesis
application/pdf
2021-05-25T17:07:48Z
Publication
unknown
unknown
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<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.</Abstract>
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