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Religious beliefs and institutions influence how people view the world and have a bearing on acceptable social norms. These provide a framework for adherents to process and deal with life events. Further, religion is also a social institution. This blog explores how religion may influence subjective well-being.
Subjective well-being is a measure of individual welfare that combines measures of life satisfaction and happiness. Subjective measures of well-being can account for non-quantifiable determinants of well-being. Therefore, in some instances, subjective well-being data may provide a superior alternative to traditional measures of well-being. Considering subjective well-being data when evaluating social policies will paint a more complete picture of policy success.
The world is filled with noise, distractions, making it difficult or impossible to make a truly informed decision. Even when that information does exist, we behave consistently irrationally. For example, if I give you a warm cup of coffee, you are more likely to like me than if I give you a cold glass of water. This is a predictable deviation from the expected outcome – namely that the beverage I provide should not be related to your opinion of me. So, if we aren’t as rational as we might believe, how do we make decisions?
Globally, calls for more economic pluralism in higher education institutions are sounding loud and clear. However, it is not always evident what ‘economic pluralism’ actually means and many people oppose it on the basis of various misconceptions and false assumptions. This blog attempts to clarify this and, perhaps more importantly, outline what economic pluralism is not.
Working hours and their effect on productivity and wellness is by no means a new topic of discussion and debate. Prior to 1900, the average American factory employee was required to work 53 hours a week. This was only reduced to the now standard 40-hour work week after much protest by labour unions, and strangely enough has never been seriously contested since. Until now, that is. This article explore the potential benefits, and some of the challenges, of a shorter work week.
In October 2017, I was fortunate enough to travel to Edinburgh, Scotland, to attend the inaugural Festival for New Economic Thinking – a gathering of “organizations and individuals seeking to improve the way economics is taught, studied, and practiced.” Funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and put together by a host of organisations – including the Young Scholars Initiative, The Minskys and Rethinking Economics – this was an economics ‘nerd-fest’ unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Running over two jam-packed days, this gathering really did have an exciting festival atmosphere and offered too many panel debates, presentations, video discussions and key note speakers than one could ever process in such a short space of time.
Numerous firms confronted by rising inputs costs and a resistant consumer are ‘shrinking’ products as means of increasing prices. This widespread concept of ‘shrinkflation’ has become a legitimate business practice for companies in South Africa. Normally a price increase would result in a rational consumer decreasing the purchase of the good or substituting it for another product, or even purchasing more (and forsake others) if it was needed for survival.
Much of economic theory rests on the assumption that people generally make good, rational, choices that maximise their own well-being given their particular circumstances. In many settings, however people make irrational “mistakes” that are frequent, predictable and persistent
Having babies is a necessary part of sustaining economic growth. Without replacement labour force participants, its pretty obvious that economic systems would eventually grind to a halt. But the process of having a baby is incredibly costly – parents must lay out an enormous amount of time, effort and money to make a child into a productive member of the labour force (full disclosure: this is a topic close to my heart, as Truen junior is now just six months old).
The standard first year definition of economics states that “economics is the study of how individuals and groups make decisions with scarce resources in order to best satisfy their wants, needs, and desires”. I recently had the opportunity to apply my university training to analyse a decision I was faced with in my personal life. It all started when my children’s school sent a newsletter to all parents declaring that hence forth, they will charge a penalty fee for children that were either picked up late from school or dropped off late for school.