The paper investigates the relation between social capital and life satisfaction focusing on the distinction between bonding and bridging. Using the latest version of the combined World and European Values Surveys, the authors first address the question of measurement of social capital by means...

Scitovsky is known as a forerunner of behavioural economics simply because he drew heavily on psychology and claimed that people's choices may be "joyless" (Scitovsky, The joyless economy, 1976). However, a careful reformulation of his analysis shows that he anticipated a number of insights...

1. Happiness in economics : the roots and perspectives of a research programme -- 2. Scitovsky's research programme on human welfare -- 3. Enjoying creative activity by developing life skill -- 4. Comfort vs. creative activity as two sources of well-being -- 5. Addiction : from well-being to...

This paper provides an explanation of the existence of the black economy, it studies the effects on output of the whole economy, and on unemployment; it also studies the effectiveness of alternative policies to move illegal firms into the official economy. The proposed model assumes...

During the last 30 years US citizens experienced, on average, a decline in reported happiness, social connections, and confidence in institutions. We show that a remarkable portion of the decrease in happiness is predicted by the decline in social connections and confidence in institutions. We...

The recent debate on happiness in economics has revived interest in Scitovsky's 1976 book The Joyless Economy, which aims at extending the concept of welfare, and explaining the income-happiness paradox, i.e. “why [American] unprecedented and fast-growing prosperity had left its beneficiaries...