The Asymmetric Experience of Positive and Negative Economic Growth: Global Evidence Using Subjective Well-Being Data

Femke De Keulenaer, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Georgios Kavetsos, Michael I. Norton, Bert Van Landeghem and George W. Ward

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Are individuals more sensitive to losses than gains in terms of economic growth? Using subjective well-being data, we observe an asymmetry in the way positive and negative economic growth is experienced. We find that measures of life satisfaction and affect are more than twice as sensitive to negative economic growth as compared to positive growth. We use Gallup World Poll data from over 150 countries, BRFSS data on 2.5 million US respondents, and Eurobarometer data that cover multiple business cycles over four decades. This research provides a new perspective on the welfare cost of business cycles and has implications for growth policy and our understanding of the long-run relationship between GDP and subjective well-being.

Keywords: Economic growth; business cycles; subjective well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D69 I39 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-hap and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1304.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Asymmetric Experience of Positive and Negative Economic Growth: Global Evidence Using Subjective Well-Being Data (2015)
Working Paper: The asymmetric experience of positive and negative economic growth: global evidence using subjective well-being data (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1304

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (cep.info@lse.ac.uk).