This paper is dating from 1995, when it has been presented at the Ragnar Frisch Centennial Memorial Conference in Oslo. It has never been published before.In this paper for the first time the Cantril ladder question data have been employed in the way which later has become known as happiness...

This paper provides empirical evidence that campaign contributions arestrongly associated with market expectations of future firm-specific political favors,including preferential access to external financing. Using a novel dataset, we find thatfirms in Brazil providing contributions in the 1998...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487010000954">'Journal of Economic Psychology'</A>, 31(6), 1008-20.<P>We analyze individual satisfaction with life as a whole and satisfaction with the personal financial situation for Israeli citizens of Jewish and Arab descent. Our data set is the Israeli Social Survey...</p></a>

This paper provides arguments in favor of using subjective questions as a proxy to measure welfare and well-being. This approach makes it possible to avoid having to define welfare and well-being means and having to identify the relevant indicators. Instead, individuals themselves define their...

There is a small but growing literature on the determinants of social capital. Most of these studies use a measure of trust to define social capital empirically. In this paper we use three different measures of social capital: the size of the individual’s social network, the extent of their...

Is there a case to be made for preferential treatment of the exposed sector in an economy when compliance to an aggregate emissions constraint induced by an international environmental agreement is mandatory? This question is being debated in many countries, including The Netherlands, in the...

We compare reported job satisfaction with vignette evaluations of hypothetical jobs by using a British, Greek and Dutch data set, containing 95 randomly assigned vignettes. In order to test comparability of international data sets recently the method of anchoring vignettes has been introduced by...

We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a country consisting of a large number of heterogeneous regions, each comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighbouring district,...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069611001604">'Journal of Environmental Economics and Management'</A> 64(1), 45-67.<p>This paper studies patenting decisions by firms in relation to the negotiation and signing of the Helsinki and Oslo protocol as part of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air...</p></a>