Both individual experiences and community characteristics influence how much people trust each other. Using individual level data drawn from US localities we find that the strongest factors associated with low trust are: i) a recent history of traumatic experiences; ii) belonging to a group that...

This Paper analyses the persistence of poverty in Sweden using a hazard rate model based on multiple spells. The model also accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and possibly endogenous initial conditions. We estimate the model on a large representative Swedish panel dataset, LINDA, for the...

This paper uses household surveys from 13 developing countries to describe consumption choices, health and education investments, employment patterns and other features of the of the economic lives of the “middle classes” defined as those whose daily consumption per capita is between $2 and...

The changes in economic policy introduced in the UK after 1979 had a substantial impact on income distribution, unemployment and productivity growth. This paper brings together available evidence in an attempt to evaluate the welfare effects of the Thatcher reforms. The estimated impact turns...

We construct indicators of the perception of job security for various types of jobs in 12 European countries using individual data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We then consider the relation between reported job security and OECD summary measures of Employment Protection...

To what extent do imposed institutions shape preferences? We consider this issue by comparing the market-versus-state attitudes of respondents from a capitalist country, Finland, and an ex-communist group of Baltic countries, and arguing that the period under the communist rule can be viewed as...

The recent literature has shown that subjective welfare depends on relative income. Attempts to test this relationship in poor countries have yielded conflicting results, suggesting that the relationship is not universal or only applies above a certain income level. We revisit the issue using...

Part-time jobs are popular among partnered women in many countries. In the Netherlands the majority of partnered working women have a part-time job. Our paper investigates, from a supply-side perspective, if the current situation of abundant part-time work in the Netherlands is likely to be a...

Putting a limit on the duration of unemployment benefits tends to introduce a "spike" in the job finding rate shortly before benefits are exhausted. Current theories explain this spike from workers' behavior. We present a theoretical model in which also the nature of the job matters....

Using fixed effects ordered logit estimation, we investigate the relationship between part-time work and working hours satisfaction; job satisfaction; and life satisfaction. We account for interdependence within the family using data on partnered men and women from the British Household Panel...