This paper presents detailed evidence about who compares to whom in terms of relative income. We rely on representative survey data on the importance of income comparisons vis-a-vis seven reference groups, allowing us to exploit within-subject heterogeneity. We explore the prevalence and...

This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. We use an integrated approach exploiting complementarities between controlled lab and representative field data. In a simple principal-agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals...

After the introduction in Section 2, we very briefly sketch out current theoretical and empirical developments in the social sciences. In our view, they all point in the same direction: toward the acute and increasing need for multidisciplinary longitudinal data covering a wide range of living...

Trust is a concept that has attracted - significant attention in economic theory and research within the last two decades: it has been applied in a number of contexts and has been investigated both as an explanatory and as a dependent variable. In this paper, we explore the questions of what...

This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. In a simple principal agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals decide how this revenue is allocated between themselves and their agents. In this environment unfairness can arise...

This paper is the first to link economic theory with empirical life-satisfaction analyses referring to internal migration. We derive an extension of the Roback (1982) model to account for benefits from regional amenities in the utility function, while controlling for income, housing costs, and...

In this paper, we compare different approaches to the generation of datasets linking employees and firms, and present the specific advantages and disadvantages of each method. We discuss in detail the employee-first method, which has only been investigated so far in the survey research in...

Using life satisfaction as a direct measure of individual utility has become popular in the empirical economic literature. In this context, it is crucial to know what circumstances or changes the measure is sensitive to. Is life satisfaction a volatile concept that is affected by minor changes...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP), this paper assesses the relationship between life satisfaction and religious practice. The main new result here is longitudinal. It is shown that individuals who become more religious over time record long term gains in life...

Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP) ist als multidisziplinäres Haushaltspanel, das Informationen zu allen Personen, die in einem Panel-Haushalt leben, erhebt und damit alle Altersjahrgänge abdeckt, nach 25 Jahren Laufzeit auch zu einer Kohorten- Studie geworden. Der zunehmende Erfolg der...