Search Results
Journal Article
The geography of life's chances
Working Paper
Voting with your feet in the United Kingdom: using cross-migration rates to estimate relative living standards
This paper reexamines and extends the literature on the use of migration rates to estimate compensating differentials as measures of regional quality of life. I estimate an interregional migration regression for the UK and use the results to measure regional quality of life and standard of living. The results suggest a North-South divide within England, and that Scotland and Wales have relatively high levels of both. The results also lead to a rejection of regional standard-of-living equivalence (long-run regional equilibrium) in the UK
Journal Article
Relative comparisons and economics: empirical evidence
This Letter reviews the empirical evidence on the extent to which individuals' sense of well-being or happiness is related to metrics of the well-being of others.
Discussion Paper
The Welfare Costs of Superstorm Sandy
As most of the New York metropolitan region begins to get back to normal following the devastation caused by superstorm Sandy, researchers and analysts are trying to assess the total ?economic cost? of the storm. But what, exactly, is meant by economic cost? Typically, those tallying up the economic cost of a disaster think of two types of costs: loss of capital (property damage and destruction) and loss of economic activity (caused by disruptions). But there is another important type of economic loss that often is not estimated or discussed in policymaking decisions: loss of welfare or ...
Working Paper
Moving to nice weather
U.S. residents, both old and young, have been moving en masse to places with nice weather. Well known is the migration towards places with warmer winter weather, which is often attributed to the introduction of air conditioning. But people have also been moving to places with cooler and less-humid summer weather, which is the opposite of what would be expected from the introduction of air conditioning. Empirical evidence suggests that the main force driving weather-related moves is an increasing valuation of weather's contribution to quality of life. Cross-sectional population growth ...
Journal Article
How accurate are quality-of-life rankings across cities?
Working Paper
A Comparison of Living Standards Across the States of America
We use an expected utility framework to examine how living standards vary across the United States and how each state's living standards have evolved over time. Our welfare measure accounts for cross-state variations in mortality, consumption, education, inequality, and cost of living. We find that per capita income is a good indicator of living standards, with a correlation of 0.80 across states. Living standards in most states, however, appear closer to those in the richest states than their difference in per capita income would suggest. Whereas high-income states benefit from higher life ...
Working Paper
A simple model of city crowdedness
Population density varies widely across U.S. cities. A calibrated general equilibrium model in which productivity and quality-of-life differ across locations can account for such variation. Individuals derive utility from consumption of a traded good, a nontraded good, leisure, and quality-of-life. The traded and nontraded goods are produced by combining mobile labor, mobile capital, and non-mobile land. An eight-fold increase in population density requires an approximate 50 percent productivity differential or an approximate 20 percent compensating differential. A thirty-two-fold increase in ...
Working Paper
The Well-Being of Nations: Estimating Welfare from International Migration
The limitations of GDP as a measure of welfare are well known. We propose a new method of estimating the well-being of nations. Using gross bilateral international migration flows and a discrete choice model in which everyone in the world chooses a country in which to live, we estimate each country?s overall quality of life. Our estimates, by relying on revealed preference, complement previous estimates of economic well-being that consider only income or a small number of factors, or rely on structural assumptions about how these factors contribute to wellbeing.