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The DOI matches its Crossref record; 97 of the 97 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Happiness and Productivity

Open access
Oswald, Andrew J., Proto, Eugenio, Sgroi, Daniel·2015·Journal of Labor Economics

Abstract

Some firms say they care about the well-being and “happiness” of their employees. But are such claims hype or scientific good sense? We provide evidence, for a classic piece rate setting, that happiness makes people more productive. In three different styles of experiment, randomly selected individuals are made happier. The treated individuals have approximately 12% greater productivity. A fourth experiment studies major real-world shocks (bereavement and family illness). Lower happiness is systematically associated with lower productivity. These different forms of evidence, with complementary strengths and weaknesses, are consistent with the existence of a causal link between human well-being and human performance.

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Crossref · 10.1086/681096

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Metadata

Authors
Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D.
Venue
Journal of Labor Economics
Published
2015-10
Volume
33
Issue
4
Pages
789-822
ISSN
  • 0734-306X (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5307
OpenAlex
W3124932231
Cited by
1,008
References
97
FWCI
94.38
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Happiness and Productivity. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/681096
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Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2015). Happiness and Productivity. Journal of Labor Economics. https://doi.org/10.1086/681096

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.