News & Events Archive

Year 2024

• In May, we hosted the first Entrepreneurship for Sustainability International Workshop, which brought together practitioners, scholars and policymakers working on entrepreneurship.  Our keynote speakers, Dr. David Halabisky (OECD) and Prof. Sreevas Sahasranamam (University of Glasgow), shared their insights on the state of entrepreneurship and its relation to the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Throughout 2024, we hosted 12 webinars as part of our Measuring Progress seminar series. Speakers presented research on quality of life and the best ways to measure societal progress.
• In June, we hosted the in-person Second Annual Measuring Progress Workshop. The Workshop featured 25 plenary presentations and two keynote addresses from Prof. Koen Decancq (University of Antwerp), on interpersonal well-being comparisons and from Dr. Tessa Peasgood (University of Sheffield) on measuring health related quality of life.
• In June, we also hosted the General Assembly of the Horizon Europe Well-being in a Sustainable Economy Revisited (WISER) Project. Within the project, we are collaborating with top universities and partners worldwide to redefine societal progress and move towards environmental and social sustainability.  
• Our well-being team participated and presented key insights from our research on job satisfaction and productivity, and on the validity of big-data derived metrics of subjective well-being at the seventh OECD world Forum on Well-being.
  

Year 2023

• June 2-3, STATEC Research will host the inaugural Annual Workshop on Measuring Progress. Approximately 40 scholars and practitioners will meet in Luxembourg to discuss the quest for better lives, how to measure progress, and tools to lastingly increase quality of life. Over two days, there will be two keynote speeches and 24 presentations all in plenary. Virtual attendance is possible. Please check the website above for details.
• In April, it was announced that Luxembourg was chosen to host the 2025 annual conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. The competitive bid was prepared by the team at STATEC Research and Business Events Luxembourg. The conference is expected to take place at the end of July and draw approximately 350 participants from around the world.
• In April, Kelsey O’Connor was asked to join the World Wellbeing Panel. Comprised of approximately 50 leading scholars in subjective well-being around the world, the aim of the Panel is to promote well-being as the ultimate purpose of all major decision makers, particularly government.
• In March, Paperjam reported on our research that documents how labour productivity growth has slowed in Luxembourg and the reasons why. See the original study by Chiara Peroni and Xi Chen here.

Year 2022

• We published three papers in December on the linkages between productivity and well-being with the International Productivity Monitor. Our work was well received, as the editors write in the Introduction, “STATEC Research has become an important centre for research on well-being measurement in general and well-being productivity linkages in particular.”
• In September, The Times covered an article by Kelsey O’Connor and Richard Easterlin on the long-run correlates of happiness, published in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). You can read The Times article here, and PNAS article here.
• In August, Francesco Sarracino received the Research Fellow Award in Quality of life, Wellbeing and Happiness Research from the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS).
• In July, the Lëtzebuerger Journal did a feature on Francesco Sarracino and the Well-being Agenda. You can read the article here.
• The Financial Times covered research conducted by Kelsey O’Connor and others in August. You can read the article entitled “Economists must get more in touch with our feelings” here.
• From June 1st to 4th approximately 90 speakers from around the world came together in Luxembourg to attend our conference “Well-Being 2022: Knowledge for informed decisions.” The event included: opening remarks from the Minister of the Economy (Franz Fayot); a round table discussion on how policy-makers can integrate the findings from well-being studies (including panelists from Luxembourg, Martijn Burger (Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization (EHERO)), Nancy Hey (What Works Centre for Wellbeing), and Katherine Scrivens (OECD)); a presentation of the new PIBien-etre Report about quality of life in Luxembourg, by Serge Allegrezza (Director of STATEC); an opening talk from a civil society activist (author and filmmaker, John De Graaf); a workshop on the World Database of Happiness by its creator Ruut Veenhoven; four keynote speeches by Stefano Bartolini, Andrew Clark, Carol Graham, and Andrew Oswald; and a lively and fun social dinner. We are grateful for the support of the National Research Fund (FNR), Caritas Luxembourg, the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS), and Global Labor Organization (GLO). For details, see the program here. For recordings of the main events, see STATEC Research’s YouTube page here. See news coverage by Delano and Luxemburger Wort.
• In March, Kelsey O’Connor was appointed Associate Editor of economics for the Journal of Happiness Studies, a leading international journal on subjective well-being or happiness. 

Year 2021

• Francesco Sarracino and Kelsey O’Connor, with Hiroshi Ono, published the opinion piece “Lost decades or success story: well-being in Japan” with the newsmagazine Nikkei Asia in November.
• In August, Kelsey O’Connor received the Young Scholar Award from the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, in recognition of a significant contribution to quality-of-life research.
• Francesco Sarracino was invited to become a member of the Australian Centre on Quality of Life in July.

Year 2020 & Before

• Francesco Sarracino appears on the cover of the September issues of 4x3, by InfoGreen. See the interview entitled “Nothing is impossible” online here.
• Francesco Sarracino and Malgorzata Mikucka received the 2019 Best Annual Applied Research in Quality of Life (ARQOL) Paper Award for the paper Consume More, Work Longer, and Be Unhappy: Possible Social Roots of Economic Crisis?
• On the 8th of July, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel referenced the results of a recent STATEC survey and Regards in an address to the Chamber of Deputies, regarding the decline in mental health during the COVID-19 lockdown. Media coverage of the Regards includes: Luxembourg Times (English), RTL (English), Wort (French), Paperjam (French), Yahoo Actualities (French), and Le Quotidien (French).
• STATEC Research received competitive funding for two COVID-19 related projects in May. One, led by Francesco Sarracino, will use sentiment analysis and Twitter data for the year of 2020 to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on preferences, attitudes, and well-being in Luxembourg and five other European countries. The second, led by Cesare Riilo, contributes to a multinational survey regarding people’s preferences on the use of a contact tracing app to fight the pandemic using a new online probability-based access panel based on STATEC data. Funding is from the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).
• Kelsey O’Connor was added to the Advisory Panel of What Works Centre Wellbeing in the United Kingdom in May. The Centre provide accessible wellbeing evidence to improve/refocus decision making among individuals, businesses, and governments.
• Francesco Sarracino was invited in March to join the World Wellbeing Panel. Comprised of approximately the 40 best-known scholars in subjective well-being in the world, the aim of the Panel is to promote well-being as the ultimate purpose of all major decision makers, particularly government.
• The 2020 update to the OECD report Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, which includes a Luxembourg country report based on new data from 2019, will be launched on the 22nd of April. 
• The Observatory of Competitiveness (ODC) and National Productivity Council (Conseil National de la Productivité) were recently recommended by the OECD. Recent publications include the Bilan Compétitivité 2019: Focus sur l’entrepreneuriat (parts in English and others in French). The NPC is led by Serge Allegrezza and includes Chiara Peroni as a board member. 
• New research released by Francesco Sarracino and Kelsey O’Connor was covered by RTL, theLuxembourger Wort, and Infogreen. The original research and news release from the 20th of January is available here, Economic growth and well-being beyond the Easterlin paradox.
• Francesco Sarracino held a lunch debate on “Growth and degrowth: rethinking the role of our economy in creating social welfare” at CARITAS on the 15th of January. The presentation was covered by the Luxembourger Wort, available here
• The Brookings Institution, a United States based think tank, discusses recently published research coauthored by Kelsey O’Connor, as part of a broader research agenda. This discussion appears here, and the original research, here.