The Easterlin Paradox refers to the fact that happiness data are typically stationary in spite of considerable increases in income. This amounts to a rejection of the hypothesis that current income is the only argument in the utility function. One possible answer is that human development...

Elbert Dijkgraaf defended his PhD-thesis 'Regulating the Dutch Waste Market' at 5 november 2004. This thesis analyses whether the risen costs of waste collection and treatment can be diminished by changing policy instruments. The thesis shows that user fees are very effective in reducing the...

Numerous renewable and small-scale distributed generation (DG) technologies have now progressed to the stage where their technical feasibility has been proven and full-sclae projects have been successfully implemented worldwide. This paper surveys the available DG technologies and models their...

This paper analyses which likely effects international co-operation on climate change, the emissions trading directive of the European Union currently introduced and the tradable emissions permit systems specified under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) will have on energy...

We state the following hypotheses: 1) Happiness depends on social rank – a term from primatology meaning the place in group hierarchy which determines mating chances, number of offspring and food share; this dependence explains the correlation between relative income and subjective well-being...

Using a South African data set, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income – measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster - enters the...

This paper reports on the construction of an International Water Poverty Index, part of the first phase of a research project into building a locally based version of the index. The purpose of the Water Poverty Index is to express an interdisciplinary measure which links household welfare with...

The article analyses further develops the neo-dependency approach already presented by the same author and looks at recent time series trends in the structure of international capital penetration, international savings, and the dynamics of “unequal transfer” and their effects on social...

The objective of this study is to bring out the case of poverty, undernourishment and health conditions of casual labourers in Shillong, the capital city of Meghalaya, India. Casual labourers are those workers who work for a very short duration (for a few hours, a day or at most a few days under...

If partners derive utility from joint leisure time, it is expected that they will coordinate their work schedules in order to increase the amount of joint leisure time. This paper tries to answer three questions using a new matching procedure where couples are matched to other couples. (1) Do...