Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans

Chloé Michel, Michelle Sovinsky, Eugenio Proto and Andrew J. Oswald
Additional contact information
Michelle Sovinsky: University of Mannheim, Germany, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London
Andrew J. Oswald: University of Warwick, and CAGE research centre, IZA Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Advertising is ubiquitous in modern life. Yet might it be harmful to the happiness of nations? This paper blends longitudinal data on advertising with large-scale surveys on citizens’ well-being. The analysis uses information on approximately 1 million randomly sampled European citizens across 27 nations over 3 decades. We show that increases in national advertising expenditure are followed by significant declines in levels of life satisfaction. This finding is robust to adjustments for a range of potential confounders including the personal and economic characteristics of individuals, country fixed-effects year dummies, and business-cycle influences. Further research remains desirable. Nevertheless, our empirical results are some of the first to be consistent with the hypothesis that, perhaps by fostering unending desires, high levels of advertising may depress societal well-being.

Keywords: adverts; status; life satisfaction; Easterlin Paradox; positive affect JEL Classification: (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... sky_proto-oswald.pdf

Related works:
Chapter: Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans (2019)
Working Paper: Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction: Cross-National Evidence on One Million Europeans (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:397

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