Happy Place

Local Happiness and Firm Behavior: Do Firms in Happy Places Invest More? 

Tuugi Chuluun & Carol Graham 
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
May 2016, Pages 41–56 

Abstract: We examine a previously unexplored relationship between local happiness and firm investment. We looked at investment in general and R&D intensity in particular, as the relatively intangible nature of the latter may make it more subject to the effects of sentiment and affect. We find that average local happiness is positively correlated with both R&D intensity and firm investment, after controlling for firm and local area characteristics. This positive relationship may be due to the optimism and longer term perspectives that are typically associated with higher levels of life satisfaction/happiness. We also look at inequality in happiness levels and find that the effect of local happiness is stronger in places with more equal happiness distributions. Younger firms’ investment behavior is also more strongly correlated with local happiness levels. The results remain robust to a battery of robustness tests including the use of residual and hedonic measures of happiness, analysis of a sample of relocated firms, and a test for reverse causality.

Levothyroxine

It appears I am hypothyroid, in terms of blood tests for TSH.

The doctor prescribed the (common) drug Levothyroxine.

There are many possible side effects.  But two of the more prominently mentioned are:

• Change of consciousness
• False or unusual sense of well-being 

I don't want to reveal anything embarrassing.  But Angus and I really could have used some of this stuff in 1981.  Because what we were using to change our consciousness and produce a false or unusual sense of well-being was more expensive and harder to get.

Hard to imagine going to the doctor and complaining, if that is the profile of side-effects to expect...

Oklahoma is NOT OK.

Apparently, we are the 8th least happy state in the Union and a member of the mid-south slough of despond. Check the mappage; the Bible belt is a pretty sad place these days.

(Clik teh Pik for an even more depressing image).


Source is here and the hat tip goes to David Yves.

Upon further review......

I finally found the perfect KPC holiday picture:

(clic the pic for an even more career-ending image)

Christmas Surprise

My wife and I have been married for more than 26 years.  To each other.

Over that time the LMM and I have solved the problem of Christmas present anxiety, the problem you have when you aren't sure what to get the other person, even though you know that person very well, because you have already gotten that person pretty much everything that person has ever expressed an interest in.

Our solution has some humor to it.  Each of us, for years, would choose things each liked, for ourselves, and then provide said thing to other person, not wrapped.  Other person would wrap it and hide it away until the time was right.  And both would feign pleasure and surprise at tree-and-present time, Christmas morning.

But that got old.  So now the LMM takes it one more step.  She buys stuff for herself, and wraps it herself, and then puts it under the tree and opens it herself.  I never see it, until Christmas morning.

This year I asked if I could see the jewelry I got her.  She said, "No, that will spoil the surprise."  To be clear:  That's MY surprise.  At seeing what I got HER.

And the fact is that I take great pleasure, and am genuinely surprised, on Christmas morning.  So, as usual, even though things may sound a little cockeyed at our house, the LMM is right, and all is well.

(I'm pretty sure Shirley will back the LMM up on this, in terms of logic.  Right, Shirl?)

Big Bang and Gifts

So, Ruth Kappes added this video to the thread on the question of gifts and voluntary exchange over at EE.  Thanks, Ruth, nicely connected!




And the points about money being better than gifts, and just going back and forth until someone dies.... what a happy thought!

I'll have what he's having

People, did you know that pandas LOVE cinnamon?

Me neither.

But it's true and I've got the proof:




Context here.