Andrew Oswald
Encyclopedia
Andrew Oswald is a Visiting Fellow at the IZA Institute in Bonn and a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick
, UK. He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher and has been a Professorial Fellow of the ESRC. He is currently a member of the board of editors of Science. He held previous posts at Oxford
, the London School of Economics
, Princeton
, Dartmouth
and Harvard
.
Andrew Oswald's bio says he has worked on seven main areas (trade unions, labour contracts, the wage curve, entrepreneurship, home ownership and unemployment, the consequences of high oil prices, and the economics of happiness and mental health).
The first area—stemming from his 1980 Oxford doctorate—was how to write down mathematical models of trade union behaviour. In the late 1970s, such research was unconventional. However, the work was to become standard in modern textbooks. It included a 1982 paper, in the Economic Journal, which was the first to propose the idea of the ‘utilitarian’ trade union model. Later in the 1980s, he worked on theoretical aspects of labour contracts, with papers in the 1986 American Economic Review and the 1984 Quarterly Journal of Economics. A 1993 paper in Labour Economics argued that last-in-first-out layoff rules means that union indifference curves are locally horizontal. Then began a strand of empirical work on labour markets—particularly the then-unconventional book The Wage Curve (with David G. ("Danny") Blanchflower), published by MIT Press in 1994. This documented the discovery of a power law—with an exponent of approximately -0.1 -- linking wages to the local unemployment rate. Unusually for that era, it used data on 5 million randomly sampled workers around the world; this went on to win Princeton’s Lester Prize. Replications of the wage-curve finding have been found in large numbers of nations. His other research on wage formation demonstrated the importance of rent-sharing in the labour market (Quarterly Journal of Economics 1992, Quarterly Journal of Economics 1996); it included it an Oxford University Press book co-authored with Alan Carruth. The fourth strand of work was on entrepreneurship. This led in particular to a 1998 paper, with Danny Blanchflower, in the Journal of Labor Economics with the title “What makes an entrepreneur?”. This has become a standard reference in university and business-school courses. It is the most-cited paper of recent decades in JOLE. Other work was on the idea that high rates of home ownership lead to a high rate of unemployment (in the 1997 Journal of Economic Perspectives) and that oil price shocks are a key driver of movements in unemployment (in the 1998 Review of Economics and Statistics).
The final theme is what is now called the economics of happiness. This was probably thought the most unusual work of all—insofar as anyone paid attention—by economists in the early 1990s when the work began. It suggested ways to estimate ‘happiness’ and job-satisfaction regression equations. Today the area is one of the fastest growing within social science. Andrew Oswald's papers include articles in the 1994 and 1997 Economic Journal, the 1996 Journal of Public Economics, the 2001 American Economic Review, and the 2004 Journal of Public Economics. According to www.repec.org these are among the most-quoted writings in modern economics. A paper in Science, co-authored with Steve Wu, in 2010, showed that across the states of the USA there is a match between subjective well-being scores and objective measures.
Andrew Oswald's newest work includes research that finds a U-shape in human well-being through life, on blood pressure and well-being, on happiness and productivity, on antidepressants, and on risk-taking. His recent co-authors include Nick Powdthavee, author of The Happiness Equation, and the Warwick economists Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi.
More broadly, his earlier journal articles included work on the design of optimal nonlinear taxation in a world in which people care about their relative income (in the 1983 Journal of Public Economics) and on why humans imitate each other (in the 1998 Journal of Public Economics). These articles are rather mathematical.
Career
Schooling mainly in Perth in Western Australia and in Currie, Edinburgh, Scotland. He holds degrees from the University of Stirling, the University of Strathclyde, and the University of Oxford. Previously at Oxford and the London School of Economics, with spells as Lecturer, Princeton University (1983-4); De Walt Ankeny Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College (1989–91); Jacob Wertheim Fellow, Harvard University (2005); Visiting Fellow, Cornell University (2008); Visiting Fellow and Senior Advisor Research, IZA, Bonn (2011).
Richard Lester Prize, Princeton University, 1995.
Medal of the University of Helsinki, 1996.
Member of the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, 2009.
series 'The Happiness Formula', has written over 200 articles for newspapers and magazines, and given about 1000 broadcast-media interviews around the world. One article that provoked a public debate was his 19 January 2006 Op-Ed in the Financial Times entitled "The Hippies Were Right All Along about Happiness".
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
, UK. He is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher and has been a Professorial Fellow of the ESRC. He is currently a member of the board of editors of Science. He held previous posts at Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
, Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, Dartmouth
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
and Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Academic interests
Andrew Oswald lists his research areas as Applied Economics and Quantitative Social Science. He has done theoretical and empirical work. His main research recently has been on the economic and social determinants of happiness and mental health. His first journal article on the economics of happiness was published in 1994 in the Economic Journal (on unhappiness and unemployment, jointly written with Andrew E Clark). Some see this as the beginning of the new and now large modern literature by economists on well-being; the early seminal work, in the 1970s, which was ignored by economists for two decades, was by Richard Easterlin. Andrew Oswald has published papers in scholarly journals across the fields of economics, social science, statistics, psychology, and epidemiology.Andrew Oswald's bio says he has worked on seven main areas (trade unions, labour contracts, the wage curve, entrepreneurship, home ownership and unemployment, the consequences of high oil prices, and the economics of happiness and mental health).
The first area—stemming from his 1980 Oxford doctorate—was how to write down mathematical models of trade union behaviour. In the late 1970s, such research was unconventional. However, the work was to become standard in modern textbooks. It included a 1982 paper, in the Economic Journal, which was the first to propose the idea of the ‘utilitarian’ trade union model. Later in the 1980s, he worked on theoretical aspects of labour contracts, with papers in the 1986 American Economic Review and the 1984 Quarterly Journal of Economics. A 1993 paper in Labour Economics argued that last-in-first-out layoff rules means that union indifference curves are locally horizontal. Then began a strand of empirical work on labour markets—particularly the then-unconventional book The Wage Curve (with David G. ("Danny") Blanchflower), published by MIT Press in 1994. This documented the discovery of a power law—with an exponent of approximately -0.1 -- linking wages to the local unemployment rate. Unusually for that era, it used data on 5 million randomly sampled workers around the world; this went on to win Princeton’s Lester Prize. Replications of the wage-curve finding have been found in large numbers of nations. His other research on wage formation demonstrated the importance of rent-sharing in the labour market (Quarterly Journal of Economics 1992, Quarterly Journal of Economics 1996); it included it an Oxford University Press book co-authored with Alan Carruth. The fourth strand of work was on entrepreneurship. This led in particular to a 1998 paper, with Danny Blanchflower, in the Journal of Labor Economics with the title “What makes an entrepreneur?”. This has become a standard reference in university and business-school courses. It is the most-cited paper of recent decades in JOLE. Other work was on the idea that high rates of home ownership lead to a high rate of unemployment (in the 1997 Journal of Economic Perspectives) and that oil price shocks are a key driver of movements in unemployment (in the 1998 Review of Economics and Statistics).
The final theme is what is now called the economics of happiness. This was probably thought the most unusual work of all—insofar as anyone paid attention—by economists in the early 1990s when the work began. It suggested ways to estimate ‘happiness’ and job-satisfaction regression equations. Today the area is one of the fastest growing within social science. Andrew Oswald's papers include articles in the 1994 and 1997 Economic Journal, the 1996 Journal of Public Economics, the 2001 American Economic Review, and the 2004 Journal of Public Economics. According to www.repec.org these are among the most-quoted writings in modern economics. A paper in Science, co-authored with Steve Wu, in 2010, showed that across the states of the USA there is a match between subjective well-being scores and objective measures.
Andrew Oswald's newest work includes research that finds a U-shape in human well-being through life, on blood pressure and well-being, on happiness and productivity, on antidepressants, and on risk-taking. His recent co-authors include Nick Powdthavee, author of The Happiness Equation, and the Warwick economists Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi.
More broadly, his earlier journal articles included work on the design of optimal nonlinear taxation in a world in which people care about their relative income (in the 1983 Journal of Public Economics) and on why humans imitate each other (in the 1998 Journal of Public Economics). These articles are rather mathematical.
Career
Schooling mainly in Perth in Western Australia and in Currie, Edinburgh, Scotland. He holds degrees from the University of Stirling, the University of Strathclyde, and the University of Oxford. Previously at Oxford and the London School of Economics, with spells as Lecturer, Princeton University (1983-4); De Walt Ankeny Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College (1989–91); Jacob Wertheim Fellow, Harvard University (2005); Visiting Fellow, Cornell University (2008); Visiting Fellow and Senior Advisor Research, IZA, Bonn (2011).
Richard Lester Prize, Princeton University, 1995.
Medal of the University of Helsinki, 1996.
Member of the Stiglitz Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, 2009.
Media contributions
Andrew contributed to the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series 'The Happiness Formula', has written over 200 articles for newspapers and magazines, and given about 1000 broadcast-media interviews around the world. One article that provoked a public debate was his 19 January 2006 Op-Ed in the Financial Times entitled "The Hippies Were Right All Along about Happiness".