This article investigates Schkade and Kahneman's (1998) maxim that ‘Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.’ This article shows that whilst becoming unemployed hurts psychologically, unemployment has a greater impact on happiness if the...

We test for calendar effects and the presence of others in reports of life satisfaction using Eurobarometer data from 31 countries over 20 years. We find significant day and month, but not time of day, effects. Life satisfaction is significantly reduced in the presence of others.

The aim of this study was to compare hypothetical and real willingness to pay (WTP) in an experimental setting by eliciting WTP for a private good, a box of chocolates. The experimental subjects were randomly divided into two groups. One group received an open-ended hypothetical WTP question and...

In a previous experiment the null hypothesis of no difference between real and hypothetical willingness to pay for a box of chocolate could not be rejected. In this study we carry out a second experiment to see if we can confirm that finding. The experimental subjects are randomly divided into...

The veil of ignorance approach is tested as a basis for empirically determining the shape of the social welfare function for income. An experiment is carried out where the participants choose between different societies that differ with respect to per capita income and the distribution of...

The aim of this paper is to introduce and test a new approach for the measurement of the marginal rate of time preference for life-years gained based on contingent valuation techniques. A simple binary willingness to pay question is administered in a general public sample of two age groups (34-5...