Helliwell, Huang, and Wang (2020), “Happiness and the Quality of Government"

John F. Helliwell, Haifang Huang, and Shun Wang, “Happiness and the Quality of Government.” NBER Working Paper 26840, March 2020 [pdf here]. 

• Happiness studies have become pretty standard parts of social science and governance in the last two decades. Helliwell, Huang, and Wang look at cross-country evidence concerning happiness and government quality; 150+ countries, 2005-2017, n≈1,500.  

• One common measure of subjective well-being is the Cantril ladder, where respondents are asked to imagine a ladder with eleven numbered levels, from zero on the bottom (worst possible life for the respondent) to ten on the top (best possible life for the respondent). 

• Life satisfaction (as measured, for instance, by the Cantril ladder) varies much more on a cross-country basis than do hedonic measures of happiness – and the long-run connection between public policy and life satisfaction seems more solid than the policy-emotions link. “Good government may or may not make you feel happy, but does… make you happier with your life as a whole [p. 5].” 

• Some empirical results: the quality of delivery of government services contributes to life satisfaction; the extent of democracy does not, though the quality of democracy is fairly highly correlated with life satisfaction. 

• Further, per-capita income is positively connected with life satisfaction; confidence in the government is closely connected to delivery quality, and significantly raises life satisfaction. 

• In cross-country comparisons, health care spending seems to be associated with higher life satisfaction, while military spending is associated with lower life satisfaction. 

• Conflict is bad for life satisfaction, though some of the connection arises from the harm that conflict imposes on per-capita income. 

• Well-being inequality reduces average life satisfaction; raising well-being for those with the least does not have to come at the expense of the well-being of everyone else.

Shakespeare on Signaling Commitment

Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose 'em:

I have made strong proof of my constancy,

Giving myself a voluntary wound

Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience.

And not my husband's secrets?

(Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 926-930)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

…prove that ever I lose more blood

with love than I will get again with drinking, pick

out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen and hang me

up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of

blind Cupid.

(Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 224-228)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I will not love: if 
I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. 

(Love's Labour's Lost, Act 4, Scene 3, Lines 1326-1327)

Dickson, Jennings, and Koop (2016) on Domestic Violence and Glaswegian Football

Alex Dickson, Colin Jennings, and Gary Koop, “Domestic Violence and Football in Glasgow: Are Reference Points Relevant?” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 78(1): 1-21, 2016 (pdf).

• Football matches can provide emotional cues that might spur domestic violence; in particular, an unexpected loss might lead to more violent incidents. Such was the finding from a 2011 article that examined some American football games, where betting odds provided the reference point for outcome expectations. 

• Dickson, Jennings, and Koop examine the Scottish Premiership (soccer), and domestic violence in the Glasgow area from January 2003 until October 2011. Two long-term and fierce rivals, Celtic and Rangers, are based in Glasgow. Together, they are referred to as the “Old Firm.” 

• Old Firm matches (that do not have extremely “unexpected” outcomes as the rivals are always competitive with each other) are associated with increased domestic violence (by some 36%); other Scottish Premiership matches, not so. (Another event that brings a significant increase in domestic violence is the Christmas/New Year’s holiday.) 

• Unexpected outcomes only are correlated with increased domestic violence for a restricted set of matches that are very important in terms of final league standings. That is, football-related loss aversion is not generally a big deal for Glaswegian domestic violence.

Dahl and DellaVigna (2009) on Movie Violence and Crime

Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna, “Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(2): 677-734, May, 2009 [pdf].

• Experimental evidence and survey responses indicate a rise in aggressive behavior after exposure to movie violence. Dahl and DellaVigna examine evidence from an ongoing “natural experiment,” seeing what happens to reported crime after a blockbuster violent movie.

• Assaults fall on the evening (both before and after midnight) that a violent movie attracts a large audience.

• For every million people watching a strongly violent or violent movie, assaults fall by more than 1% that night; after midnight, the fall is closer to 2%. A popular violent movie reduces assaults by about 1,000 per weekend. (Still, an unseasonably cold day would lead to an even greater fall.) 

• The mechanism seems to be that the criminogenic population selects into watching the movie rather than, say, drinking. Note that most movie houses do not serve alcohol. So for the evening of the movie watching, there is “voluntary incapacitation.” For the post-midnight hours, presumably there is a carry-on effect from the relatively salubrious hours in the cinema. 

• Even though violent movies reduce crime by enticing violence-prone individuals into the comparatively peaceful setting of a cinema, there would be an even further reduction in crime if these same people watched a non-violent movie. The laboratory evidence isn’t wrong, but it does not capture what appears to be the most important element of the movie violence-crime connection, the incapacitation of likely criminals as they watch movies. There is no evidence for an overall cathartic effect from watching violent movies.