TY  - JOUR
AU  - de Quidt, Jonathan
AU  - Haushofer, Johannes
TI  - Depression for Economists
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 22973
PY  - 2016
Y2  - December 2016
DO  - 10.3386/w22973
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22973
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22973.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan de Quidt
Institute for International Economic Studies
Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
E-Mail: jonathan.dequidt@iies.su.se

Johannes Haushofer
Department of Economics
Stockholm University
Universitetsvägen 10 A
Stockholm 106 91 Sweden
E-Mail: johannes.haushofer@ne.su.se
M1  - published as Jonathan de Quidt, Johannes Haushofer. "Depression through the Lens of Economics: A Research Agenda," in Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter, and Jean-Paul Chavas, editors, "The Economics of Poverty Traps" University of Chicago Press (2019)

M3  - presented at "The Economics of Asset Accumulation and Poverty Traps", June 28-29, 2016
AB  - Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent mental illnesses worldwide. Existing evidence suggests that it has both economic causes and consequences, such as unemployment. However, depression has not received significant attention in the economics literature. In this paper, we present a simple model which predicts the core symptoms of depression from economic primitives, i.e. beliefs. Specifically, we show that when exogenous shocks cause an agent to have pessimistic beliefs about the returns to her effort, this agent will exhibit depressive symptoms such undereating or overeating, insomnia or hypersomnia, and a decrease in labor supply. When these effects are strong enough, they can generate a poverty trap. We present descriptive evidence that illustrates the predicted relationships.
ER  -