Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

"An Australian perspective: Short-run opportunities for some of these workers have increased during the covid epidemic; e.g. stay at home directives have increased demand for home delivery of groceries and restaurant meals. Like taxi drivers, Uber driver work would have decreased due to stay or work from home directives; less demand for rides. During the pandemic, In Australia, these workers did not receive COVID-supplementary income support (JobKeeper payments), because they were not on the permanent employment books of employers prior to the pandemic. However, in the long run the work conditions for these workers is even worse, because they are either casuals or permanent part-time. These workers are: paid less; do not have company-provided healthcover, nor; workplace Health & Safety support ( we have had three bicycle-riding meal delivery persons killed on Australian roads over the past couple of months), and; they do not get sick or holiday pay. Legislation is currently under consideration in the Australian Federal Parliament to extend these rights to casual workers once they have worked for a firm long enough for it to be considered a 'permanent position'; how long that is up for considerable debate.
Life satisfaction movement over recent time will be very much relative to how things changed in each country. In Australia, we will have to wait for the 2020 & 2021 HILDA and other data to get good empirical numbers. Initial observations have suggested that Australian Government policies mostly favoured those who were in permanent jobs; if you were on thee employment books of a firm who applied for Job Keeper, the Government just sent you money to top up your employees wages. The recent recovery of Australia's unemployment rate to ~6.8% has come mostly from the reinstatement of those who were permanent employees pre-pandemic. The unemployed had to go to the unemployment office and beg for support ( we saw very long lines); Next month the extra covid support for the unemployed goes away; most of the increase in the unemployed came from those who had casual jobs pre pandemic; The arts and academia received no Government transfers; 17,000 job losses in academia between March 2020 and January 2021. A recent survey of those in the arts has shown 60% think they will have to leave the industry due to income loss. This will pull down the overall happiness of society, but, data like HILDA may not capture this because the job loss is sector-based, and, among casual workers who would not be surveyed, and if so, have a relatively small weight in the HILDA sample frame.
All this without considering the psychological effects from lockdowns; in OZ demand for mental health services has increased ~five fold (the Black Dog institute estimates between 25% to 33% of the community will be experiencing high levels of worry and anxiety during similar pandemics). The miserable are not happy, especially if you are an Uber driver without rides!"

Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

Casual work can suit some people (e.g. students) so the preference between the options does not apply to all workers. In addition, independent jobs can have added stresses such as paper-work and tax obligations. However, for the majority of people the choice of having autonomy to make one's own decisions is preferable to living the life of the precariat where hours of work are at the whim of large employers.

Professor Ronnie Schob
Professor, School of Business and Economics, Freie Universitat Berlin

Self-employment increases job satisfaction as it provides greater occupational autonomy

Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics

The importance of autonomy, personal growth, and meaning for job satisfaction and overall wellbeing is one of the oldest and strongest finding in the wellbeing literature. A 2015 study from Buddelmeyer et al. ( https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12090) for instance found Australians to get markedly less wellbeing from casual jobs as opposed to more secure and more autonomous jobs. In simple terms, being the hired help is not as satisfying as running the show oneself, even if its a rather small show.

Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich

Definitely, independence is a big factor in worker well-being and casual employment itself is not very conducive to worker well-being.

Professor Arie Kapteyn
Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

There are two reasons: uncertain or fluctuating incomes cause stress; having less control over one's work leads to lower well-being

Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC

Although many people cannot deal well with uncertainty, those working in independent jobs typically have chosen for it because of their personality traits. In other words, on average people in independent jobs can deal with risk and uncertainty better than those on regular jobs.

In contrast casual employment is typically related to having little access to stable and more creative jobs. In other words, those in causal employment are not better equipped to deal with uncertainty, but instead tend to be people with lower employability opportunities. For this people, not having a fix salary can cause stress. This reduces well being.

On top of this, large companies tend to offer much less training to causal workers and these workers therefore slowly fall back in the labor market. In other words, as time passes they are less employable than before. Within the company, in addition, there are typically no promotion opportunities for these causal workers, as opposed to more stable workers (for example, the mid-managers or computer programmers of uber do have better opportunities).

Finally, although independent jobs offer less economic certainly than fixed term workers (for example, in a bank or large shop), these independent jobs are typically related to more creative jobs that, in addition, are closer to the worker abilities. This increases wellbeing. Therefore, independent workers typically have a larger wellbeing, everything else constant, than the rest.

Professor Gigi Foster
Professor, School of Economics, UNSW School of Economics

During Covid, people still used many services that large companies provided, while small businesses often lost out to bigger firms - so jobs associated with providing the former services were not as badly affected as the owners of those smaller independent businesses. Restaurants have a foot in both camps and hence the impact on jobs associated with them was variable. My answer to the survey question them is driven by the fact that a main driver of wellbeing differences between these groups will be associated with employment or lack of it. It's also true that shop owners will on average tend to be a bit older and with more financial security than casual employees of some types (e.g., delivery workers) - and the young have suffered more wellbeing damage during this period than those in midlife, but i expect that this effect would be dominated by the first.

Professor Ori Heffetz
Associate Professor of Economics, Cornell University and Hebrew University

I think currently, very different individuals, with very different circumstances, self-select into the different categories. So it's hard to interpret this comparison.

Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Professor, McGill University

This does not seem to have a strong causal interpretation, so even answering the question could be misleading. That is, different people choose different kinds of jobs, and not all large companies behave the same way. Rather than making generalizations across lines like "casual employment" and "large companies", it might be meaningful to think where we need to restrict the possibility of entering into an exploitative contract, otherwise ensure security for all workers, ensure sufficient life-long opportunities for training, and ensure that barriers against labour organizing and advocacy are rolled back.

Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University

I'm not sure if this is with respect to COVID or not given the introduction to this survey. During COVID lockdowns for example, those in the restaurant industry may have suffered more due to restrictions on public gatherings. In contrast, delivery jobs may have increased. More generally, however, I think the distinction that is critical is not so much whether employment is casual or independent, but rather the level and stability of pay and the degree of autonomy a job provides. It seems both casual and more regular employment could offer varying degrees of autonomy and pay, so that one is not necessarily more detrimental than the other in terms of well-being.

Professor Alois Stutzer
Professor of Political Economics, University of Basel

It is critical to understand whether the people in casual employment would have a job at all if these opportunities were not existing.

Professor Heinz Welsch
Professor of Economics, University of Oldenburg

Both kinds of job involve a high degree of insecurity, but some would argue that independent jobs offer more autonomy which may foster wellbeing (assuming that both income and insecurity are the same). The two kinds of job may be associated with different personalities, so it's hard to tell.

Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

According to economic theory, we would expect that, holding everything constant (including management skills), individuals who choose more independent jobs where they enjoy more autonomy on average will earn lower wages. In practice, though, the workers who are able to get more independent jobs (e.g., owning their own businesses) will often be those with more of the relevant skills (e.g., entrepreneurial skills). I am not aware of any evidence that takes into account wages, autonomy, and job satisfaction.

Professor Eugenio Proto
Alec Cairncross Professor of Applied Economics and Econometrics, University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Business School

Difficult to identify the effect, causal workers in large companies are not identical to workers in more independent jobs.

Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

For this question, I understand well-being from the hedonic perspective (i.e. subjective well-being; SWB). SWB (Diener et al., 1999) is comprised of three dimensions: Life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. Life satisfaction, the cognitive dimension of SWB (Diener et al., 1985) represents satisfaction with different aspects of life such as work, family relations, and health, and has been associated with several indicators of a good life (Diener & Tay, 2017). Job satisfaction, thus, is a key element of well-being (Unanue et al., 2017a).

Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017) state that humans have three psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness) that are fundamental nutrients for thriving and flourishing. SDT has consistently shown that the satisfaction of the three needs (BPNS) is significantly associated with higher job satisfaction (Unanue, Rempel, 2017). Additionally, recent research (Dawson et al. 2017) has shown that job insecurity is one of the most powerful predictors of employee’s well-being on temporary contracts. Indeed, “a large proportion of the difference in self-reported well-being between permanent and temporary employees appears to be explained by differences in satisfaction with job security (p. 69). Thus, talking all previous findings together, I think that the answer to the survey question is it DEPENDS. For example, if employees feel higher job security as well as higher BPNS, they are more likely to feel higher job satisfaction, and thus, higher well-being. Whether the constructs are higher on casual employment connected to large companies or in more independent jobs is a topic for further research.

References

Dawson, C., Veliziotis, M., & Hopkins, B. (2017). Temporary employment, job satisfaction and subjective well-being. Economic and industrial democracy, 38(1), 69-98.

Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress. Psychological bulletin, 125(2), 276.

Diener, E. D., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of personality assessment, 49(1), 71-75.

Diener, E., & Tay, L. (2017). A scientific review of the remarkable benefits of happiness for successful and healthy living. Happiness: Transforming the development landscape, 90-117.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Publications.

Unanue, W., Gómez, M. E., Cortez, D., Oyanedel, J. C., & Mendiburo-Seguel, A. (2017a). Revisiting the link between job satisfaction and life satisfaction: The role of basic psychological needs. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 680.

Unanue, W., Rempel, K., Gómez, M. E., & Van den Broeck, A. (2017). When and why does materialism relate to employees’ attitudes and well-being: the mediational role of need satisfaction and need frustration. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1755.

Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam

On average yes, but some people flourish better in causual employment

Professor Mark Wooden
Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the HILDA Survey Project, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne

Empirical research has consistently shown that independent workers (i.e., the self-employed) score consistently higher on job satisfaction measures than dependent workers (i.e., employees). There is also some research showing that among the self-employed, which includes gig workers (such as Uber derivers), satisfaction levels differ according to the level of independence. Research I was involved in and published in the Journal of Small Business Management back in 1997, for example, found in a sample of Australian workers that job satisfaction levels were lower among self-employed workers that we described as 'dependent contractors' than among other more independent self-employed workers (but no lower than wage and salary earners).

Research on gig workers is still in its infancy, and to date tends to show that job satisfaction levels vary widely with the circumstances of the gig worker, but my strong expectation is that independence in the job is a major influence.

Less clear is how much these differences in job satisfaction translate into differences in overall well-being. By expectation is that there must be some impact, though I expect that on average it is not large.

Doctor Francesco Sarracino
Economist, Research Division of the Statistical Office of Luxembourg -STATEC

Locus of control, or - in lay terms - freedom to run your life as it suits you best, is one of the polar stars of a happy life. Independent workers often balance the risks of their activity against the benefits of being in control of their life. However, when working for large companies, workers find themselves between the hammer and the anvil. Lots of pressure to stay afloat; the need to have positive rankings in an anonymized and unregulated environment; theoretically infinite competition that compresses their revenues and increases their working time are some of the reasons that kill the benefits of having independent jobs.

Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

During these covid times, things like tax changes, new regulations and barriers to entry are the least of the people's worries. They are still scared of catching the bug! The People are still focussed on Family. The question is, how will a country's citizens view these things post covid, if we ever get there. This will be a country specific response. Having recognised the need for health services during covid, maybe US citizen's will demand universal healthcare? Australian's & Brits will not, because they already have it. Citizen's responses to climate change will have a bigger say in these things than in the past. Biden has put oxygen into the climate change argument. Once climate change supporting Governments who recently listened to big industry & mining only to morph into climate deniers are coming under pressure at the ballot box. Some see these firms as having taken advantage of the covid fog to opaquely lure Governments into extending their carbon-economy well into the future, at the expense of renewables entry into markets. Five minutes before the comet hits earth, the people will not care about tax, regulation, or barriers to competitors; how close is climate disaster????

Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

"There should be no presumption that large companies are preferable for workers' wellbeing or for the wellbeing of citizens/residents relative to small companies, and therefore policies should not assist large companies relative to others. However, there should also be no presumption that ""small is beautiful"". Many studies* indicate that small firms pay lower wages and tend to be less productive (per worker) than larger firms in many sectors (especially manufacturing), but this is not so in all sectors,** so policy should also not explicitly favour small firms. The conclusion is that policies should generally be size-neutral.

* For instance, see:
Hong, Shangqin, Les Oxley, Philip McCann and Trinh Le (2016). Why firm size matters: Investigating the drivers of innovation and economic performance in New Zealand using the Business Operations Survey. Applied Economics, 48(55):5379-5395.

Leung, Danny, Césaire Meh and Yaz Terajima (2010). Firm Size and Productivity. Bank of Canada Working Paper 2008-45.

**For instance, see:
Berlingieri, Giuseppe , Sara Calligaris and Chiara Criscuolo (2018) The Productivity-Wage Premium. AEA Papers and Proceedings , 108(May), 328-333.

"

Professor Ronnie Schob
Professor, School of Business and Economics, Freie Universitat Berlin

Too general

Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics

I think this is true for several reasons. One is that employees are happier in smaller companies where they are more valued and treated as equals. The second is that an economy totally dominated by very large companies is more prone to state capture by those large corporations, which stifles initiative and wellbeing in the long-run. The third is that distortions in favour of one type of organisation encourage investments in getting political favours throughout society, which is essentially a zero-sum game and thus a waste of effort that could be better spent.

Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich

That's a tough one. On the one hand, most firms become big because they provide something that people want, but to me, it would seem more important to have policies for small firms, solo-self-employed or freelancers instead of favoring large companies, especially when those already have a lot of market power.

Professor Arie Kapteyn
Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

Barriers to competition tend to stifle innovation

Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC

These policies do not only interfere in the well function of the markets and thus generate less efficient outcomes, but they also promote large companies, which, on average, have a large share of their employment in causal contracts (and thus reduced wellbeing, see Q1). These policies therefore favor only the top wealth and income earners. This tax and regulation dumping favors large companies that are the ones that have more influence in politics and puts democracy at risk. This companies are getting more powerful and putting pressure on governments to implement other policies that also favors them. This also reduced the wellbeing of the majority of the people.

These policies in addition lead us to a low tax equilibrium, as large companies move to places that compete with regulation and taxation. In the meanwhile, small companies and immobile workers are subject to higher taxes. This puts the welfare state at risk and thus reduces workers wellbeing.

At the same time this unfair competition destroys small independent companies that might have been more efficient if they were competing on equal grounds. This smaller companies increase well-being of the population, as they offer more creative jobs to more people and are connected to the city or region where they operate, offering better job opportunities. In other words, large companies offer more polarized jobs in terms of both, wages and quality (creativeness, training, opportunities to promotion,…).

Professor Gigi Foster
Professor, School of Economics, UNSW School of Economics

No question. More competition is better for everyone in the longer run.

Professor Ori Heffetz
Associate Professor of Economics, Cornell University and Hebrew University

Generally speaking, barriers to entry and other policies that tilt rather than level the ground tend to stand in the way of competition.

Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Professor, McGill University

I find the statement too simplistic. Ideology should be secondary to creativity when it comes to policy. Moreover, it is not the size of the company that we have most wrong, but rather the corporate structure and mandate. A cultural and legal expectation that limited liability firms are intended to benefit society at large is missing. We should likely be phasing out the old model comletely or nearly completely. As recently articulated by the Happiness Research Institute's "WALY" report, existing corporate SROI methods are no good. Better tools for wellbeing accounting and accountability are needed.

Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University

From the perspective of employment, favouring large companies at the expense of competitors could reduce wellbeing by reducing employment options and opportunities that might be available through healthy competition. From the perspective of consumerism, wellbeing might also be reduced because there could be less variety in services and products.

Professor Alois Stutzer
Professor of Political Economics, University of Basel

It is important to have competition between firms not within large hierarchies. Empirical evidence by Matthias Benz and Bruno Frey shows that it is more difficult to maintain high procedural utility from the benefits of self-determination in large hierarchies.

Professor Heinz Welsch
Professor of Economics, University of Oldenburg

In the product market there are two opposing forces. One is the potential cost reduction due to economies of scale & scope. The other is market power. The net outcome for product prices is not generally clear. In merger cases, for instance, antitrust authorities try to assess this on a case by case basis. In the labor market, market power of large companies leads to downward pressure on wages. The long run effect on dynamic efficiency (innovation) of barriers to entry may also be negative. My gut feeling is that the overall effect on wellbeing is negative.

Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California

Large companies have the resources to influence policy in their own favor. They do not have as strong an incentive to promote the wellbeing of the overall population, especially when there is some conflict with their own interests.

Professor Eugenio Proto
Alec Cairncross Professor of Applied Economics and Econometrics, University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Business School

There might be some losers, it is true, but overall the welfare effect can still be positive. Think about Uber cabs, they are extremely useful.

Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

I completely disagree. Giving more benefits to some (e.g. large) companies at the expenses of other ones, may have negative consequences on population well-being. For example, placing barriers to competitors may lead to a monopolistic market and destroy free competition. These kinds of actions may decrease trust and increases inequalities. A substantial body of research has shown that the higher the country inequality, the lower the societal and individual well-being (e.g. higher infant mortality, homicides, and imprisonment as well as lower mental health, trust and social mobility; see Wilkinson and Picket, 2010, 2017).

References

Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level. Why equality is better for everyone?

Wilkinson, R. G., & Pickett, K. E. (2017). The enemy between us: The psychological and social costs of inequality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(1), 11-24.

Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Such market distortions reduce market efficiency trust in institutions

Professor Mark Wooden
Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the HILDA Survey Project, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne

Textbook economic theory leads us to expect that policies that create rents for one group by creating barriers to entry, tax concessions and the like, will be welfare reducing. In the real world this need not necessarily follow, and depends on factors such as economies of scale and corporate goodwill. Nevertheless, given the generality of this question, I have to agree with the proposition posed.

Doctor Francesco Sarracino
Economist, Research Division of the Statistical Office of Luxembourg -STATEC

Such policies will likely contribute to building economic empires. This creates a huge risk: companies become too big to fail, and governments become their hostage. The public loses the possibility to exert control and regulate their activities, and to redistribute resources. On one hand, democracy is undermined: governments end up serving the purposes of such powerful economic entities, and lose their raison d'être. On the other hand, inequalities may explode, as this big accumulation of wealth creates the ground for self-sustained social stratification.