Alex Edmans of London Business School and three coauthors gathered data on the average positivity of songs that people in 40 nations listened to on Spotify. The researchers then compared that data with the performance of each country’s national stock market over the same period. They wanted to see if there was a correlation between mood, as reflected by the music played, and financial returns. There was. The conclusion: When people listen to happy songs, the market outperforms.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review.