Publications

What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people’s well-being? How would policy change if well-being was the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human priorities and to promote public policy changes that are based on what really matters to people. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive range of evidence from longitudinal data on over one hundred thousand individuals in Britain, the United States, Australia, and Germany, the authors consider the key factors that affect human well-being.The authors explore factors such as income, education, employment, family conflict, health, childcare, and crime—and their findings are not what we might expect. Contrary to received wisdom, income inequality accounts for only two percent or less of the variance in happiness across the population; the critical factors affecting a person’s happiness are their relationships and their mental and physical health. More people are in misery due to mental illness than to poverty, unemployment, or physical illness. Examining how childhood influences happiness in adulthood, the authors show that academic performance is a less important predictor than emotional health and behavior, which is shaped tremendously by schools, individual teachers, and parents. For policymakers, the authors propose new forms of cost-effectiveness analysis that places well-being at center stage.Groundbreaking in its scope and results, The Origins of Happiness offers all of us a new vision for how we might become more healthy, happy, and whole.

Alors que les politiques d'austérité et les réformes budgétaires décidées par la zone euro ont un impact de plus en plus perceptible sur les millions de citoyens européens, ce livre tente d'offrir une réponse aux questionnements qui traversent l'opinion publique. Au-delà d'un état des lieux de la zone euro, ce livre interroge la pertinence des choix d austérité et pose la question des ajustements à mettre en oeuvre dans une union monétaire entre pays hétérogènes.

Providing an introduction to stochastic optimal control in infinite dimensions, this book gives a complete account of the theory of second-order HJB equations in infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, focusing on its applicability to associated stochastic optimal control problems. It features a general introduction to optimal stochastic control, including basic results (e.g. the dynamic programming principle) with proofs, and provides examples of applications. A complete and up-to-date exposition of the existing theory of viscosity solutions and regular solutions of second-order HJB equations in Hilbert spaces is given, together with an extensive survey of other methods, with a full bibliography. In particular, Chapter 6, written by M. Fuhrman and G. Tessitore, surveys the theory of regular solutions of HJB equations arising in infinite-dimensional stochastic control, via BSDEs. The book will be of interest to both pure and applied researchers working in the control theory of stochastic PDEs, and in PDEs in infinite dimensions. Readers from other fields who want to learn the basic theory will also find it useful. The prerequisites are: standard functional analysis, the theory of semigroups of operators and its use in the study of PDEs, some knowledge of the dynamic programming approach to stochastic optimal control problems in finite dimensions, and the basics of stochastic analysis and stochastic equations in infinite-dimensional spaces.

The 2008 financial crisis put an end to an era of sustained economic growth in Europe. The size of the shock differed across European countries and affected economies in different ways. Yet despite this heterogeneity, most European countries suffered a prolonged period of economic slowdown which raised concerns about the risk of a secular stagnation in Europe. This book focuses on labour productivity in Europe, one of the main drivers of growth and prosperity. Although productivity trends became the focus of policy interest in the immediate aftermath of the recession in the UK, 'productivity puzzles' received much less attention in the rest of Europe. These 'puzzles', which are apparent to greater or lesser extents in most European economies, centre on the marked decline in labour productivity growth which occurred with the on-set of recession. They are puzzles because, in neo-classical economics, firms respond to demand shocks by laying off workers, thus maintaining labour productivity and limiting growth in unit labour costs. Yet this didn't happen in this recession - at least, not to the same extent as in previous recessions, except in Spain. This book brings together contributions from leading European economists who analyse production models and macroeconomic policies, with specific focus on European countries that represent around 60% of the EU GDP. Chapters on France, Germany, the UK, and Spain provide new evidences at the firm/workplace level, and stress the role of transitory labour market mechanisms Contributors to this volume - Dan Andrews, OECD Philippe Askenazy, CNRS- Paris School of Economics and Ecole Normale Superieure Lutz Bellmann, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Tito Boeri, INPS Alex Bryson, UCL Martin Chevalier, INSEE Nicholas Crafts, University of Warwick Eva Moreno-Galbis, University of Maine Hans-Dieter Gerner, University of Applied Sciences Koblenz Christine Erhel, University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne John Forth, National Institute of Econom