Treasury Guest Lecture: Wellbeing Report Seminar Series - Paul Frijters and Christian Krekel

Watch our virtual Wellbeing Report seminar with Chris Krekel and Paul Frijters from the London School of Economics who will present on Wellbeing Years cost benefit analyses, principles and examples. About this webinar Professors Chris Krekel and Paul Frijters of the London School of Economics will explain Well-Being Years (WELLBY's) cost-benefit analysis as recently adopted by the UK bureaucracy. They will cover a quick history of cost-benefit analyses in Western bureaucracies, including the main blind spots in what they undervalue: social life, the environment, and mental health. In contrast, WELLBY is based on the life-satisfaction question that gauges what individuals themselves reveal to be important about their life. The talk explains how WELLBY relates to the Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY), how it is already used to do cost-benefit analyses in government, charities and large organisations, and what the main bottlenecks are in terms of wholesale replacement of traditional economic cost benefit analysis. Some examples will be given and the relationship with sustainable development goals will be discussed. About the presenters Christian Krekel is an Assistant Professor in Behavioural Science in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics. He is also a Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, and at the Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford. Christian is an applied economist: his research fields are behavioural economics and wellbeing, policy and programme evaluation, and applied panel and spatial analysis. He obtained his PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics. Christian's research looks at how our environment affects our lives – specifically our behaviour, health, and (ultimately) our wellbeing. He is also interested in using nudges to increase pro-environmental behaviour. His work is aimed at improving evidence-based policy on how to improve these outcomes in a cost-effective manner. He is a frequent advisor to international organisations such as the World Bank or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He also advises national governments, for example, on how to use wellbeing data for policy analysis and appraisal. For his work, he has been awarded the Young Economist Award (FEEM Award) by the European Economic Association. Paul Frijters is a Professor of Wellbeing Economics at the London School of Economics: from 2016-Nov 2019 at the Center for Economic Performance, thereafter at the Department of Social Policy. He completed his Masters in Econometrics at the University of Groningen, including a seven-month stay in Durban, South Africa before completing a PhD through the University of Amsterdam. He has also engaged in teaching and research at the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, QUT, UQ, and now the LSE. Professor Fritjers specializes in applied micro-econometrics, including labor, happiness, and health economics, though he has also worked on pure theoretical topics in macro and micro fields. His main area of interest is in analysing how socio-economic variables affect the human life experience and the "unanswerable" economic mysteries in life. Professor Frijters is a prominent research economist and has published over 150 papers in fields including unemployment policy, discrimination and economic development. He was the Research Director of the Rumici Project, a project sponsored by the Australian Ministry of Foreign Aid (AusAid), and is also a co-editor of the journal, Economic Record. In 2009 he was voted Australia's best young economist under 40 by the Australian Economic Society. He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2010. Read the NZ Treasury Wellbeing Report: https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/background/trends-wellbeing-aotearoa-new-zealand-2000-2020 Read the NZ Treasury Trends Report: https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/tp/living-standards-framework-dashboard-april-2022