It’s hard to put a price on happiness, but if you’ve ever had to choose between a job you like and a better-paying one that you like less, you’d like to know what job satisfaction is worth.

John Helliwell and Haifang Huang (economists at the University of British Columbia) have estimated four key factors influencing job satisfaction:

Trust in management is like a 36 percent pay raise; a job with lots of variety is like a 21 percent pay raise; a job that requires a high level of skill is like a 19 percent pay raise; and a job with enough time to finish your work is like an 11 percent pay raise.

a. How might the job characteristics described here affect the supply of labor for different types of jobs?

b. How might this influence on supply result in different wage rates that reflect the attractiveness of a job’s characteristics?