This title was first published in 2001. This original study of mental health care presents a conceptual approach to the nature of the industry’s multiple outputs. It pays special attention to the economic role of government, and also uses conventional economic theory to analyze the fact that the needs and wants of people with mental illnesses and their care-givers are frequently neglected.

In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes hav...

Why is marriage worth £200,000 a year?Why will having children make you unhappy?Why does happiness from winning the lottery take two years to arrive?Why does time heal the pain of divorce or the death of a loved one – but not unemployment?Everybody wants to be happy. But how much happiness – precisely – will each life choice bring? Should I get married? Am I really going to feel happy about the career that I picked? How can we decide not only which choice is bet...

Traditionally economists have based their economic predictions on the assumption that humans are super-rational creatures, using the information we are given efficiently and generally making selfish decisions that work well for us as individuals. Economists also assume that we're doing the very best we can possibly do - not only for today, but over our whole lifetimes too. But increasingly the study of behavioural economics is revealing that our lives are not that simple. Instead, our deci...

In the last decade, behavioral economics, borrowing from psychology and sociology to explain decisions inconsistent with traditional economics, has revolutionized the way economists view the world. But despite this general success, behavioral thinking has fundamentally transformed only one field of applied economics-finance. Peter Diamond and Hannu Vartiainen's Behavioral Economics and Its Applications argues that behavioral economics can have a similar impact in other fields of e...

Manski argues that public policy is based on untrustworthy analysis. Failing to account for uncertainty in an uncertain world, policy analysis routinely misleads policy makers with expressions of certitude. Manski critiques the status quo and offers an innovation to improve both how policy research is conducted and how it is used by policy makers.

For decades, the primary argument in justifying education has been based on its direct economic effects. Yet education also provides "social benefits" for individuals and society at large, including a better way of taking care of ourselves, and consequently creating a better society to live in. Though it is difficult to quantify these social benefits, a more systematic analysis would improve our understanding of the full effects of education and provide a basis for considering related poli...

The Feeling of Risk brings together the work of Paul Slovic, one of the world's leading analysts of risk, to describe the extension of risk perception research into the first decade of this new century.In this collection of important works, Paul Slovic explores the conception of 'risk as feelings' and examines the interaction of feeling and cognition in the perception of risk. He also examines the elements of knowledge, cognitive skill, and communication necessary for good decision...

How can individuals best be encouraged to take more responsibility for their well-being and their environment or to behave more ethically in their business transactions? Across the world, governments are showing a growing interest in using behavioural economic research to inform the design of nudges which, some suggest, might encourage citizens to adopt beneficial patterns of behaviour. In this fascinating collection, leading academic economists, psychologists and philosophers reflect on h...

How does education affect economic and social outcomes, and how can it inform public policy?Volume 3 of the Handbooks in the Economics of Education uses newly available high quality data from around the world to address these and other core questions. With the help of new methodological approaches, contributors cover econometric methods and international test score data. They examine the determinants of educational outcomes and issues surrounding teacher salaries and licensure. And reflect...

For four decades Robert Evans has been Canada’s foremost health policy analyst and commentator, playing a leadership role in the development of both health economics and population health at home and internationally. An Undisciplined Economist collects Evans’ most important contributions and includes two new articles.The topics addressed range widely, from the peculiar structure of the health care industry to the social determinants of the health of entire populations to t...

This book includes contributions from a variety of different perspectives on employee turnover. We categorize these myriad papers in terms of history, scope, theory development, and population generalization. Part I thus begins with an article by James Price, a pioneering thinker in the turnover field. Initiating the most systematic turnover research ever undertaken, Dr. Price describes his persistent quest to develop and refine a comprehensive theory of turnover. His 30-year intellectual ...