This paper uses the nationally representative Albanian Living Standards Measurement Study survey from 2005 to investigate the determinants of life satisfaction. In common with much of the existing empirical literature that models life satisfaction (or subjective well-being) this paper exploits...

The assessment of alternative forest management strategies should account not only for the private benefits to forest landowners but also for the ecological, environmental and economic benefits valued by society. There are a number of empirical valuation methods that may contribute to that...

The present paper explores the link between poverty as capability deprivation and current life satisfaction. Using German panel data, I examine both whether capability deprivation does hurt and whether individuals eventually adapt. To detect capability deprivation I suggest relying on the...

Austria enjoys strong material well-being and high quality of life. Steady convergence with top GDP per capita levels translated into decisive improvements in household disposable incomes while significant redistribution has ensured low income inequality and poverty. This has been combined with...

Surveys that are designed to measure subjective states (e.g., happiness) typically generate ordinal data. A fundamental problem is that methods used to analyse ordinal data (e.g., ordered probit) rely on strong and often unjustified distributional assumptions. In this paper, we propose using...

The OECD has long argued that the ultimate goal of public policies is to improve the quality of our lives. But what makes us happy? Does living in a country guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities to women and men increase people’s happiness? This paper shows that gender based...

Poverty analytical approaches have recently considered households deprivation in several welfare attributes in what has been tagged multidimensional poverty. This approach has been well embraced due to acceptability of human development indices as a parameter for comparing welfare across...

Austria enjoys strong material well-being and high quality of life. Steady convergence with top GDP per capita levels translated into decisive improvements in household disposable incomes while significant redistribution has ensured low income inequality and poverty. This has been combined with...

This study investigates the determinants of individual subjective well-being in Italy using the 2004, 2006 and 2008 waves of the Bank of Italy Survey on Household Income and Wealth (Shiw). For Italy empirical analysis confirms the previous evidence provided in the literature on happiness. Among...

Surveys are an important tool in economics and in the social sciences more broadly. However, methods used to analyse ordinal survey data (e.g., ordered probit) rely on strong and often unjustified distributional assumptions. In this paper, we propose using survey response times to solve that...