Over the past few years, there has been a steadily increasing interest on the part of economists in happiness research. We argue that reported subjective well-being is a satisfactory empirical approximation to individual utility and that happiness research is able to contribute important...

In many countries environmental policies and regulations are implemented to improve environmental quality and thus individuals' well-being. However, how do individuals value the environment? In this paper, we review the Life Satisfaction Approach (LSA) representing a new non-market valuation...

We propose that outcome utility and process utility can be distinguished and empirically measured. People gain procedural utility from participating in the political decision-making process itself, irrespective of the outcome. Nationals enjoy both outcome and process utility, while foreigners...

We study the importance of economists' professional situation toward their life satisfaction based on a unique survey of mostly academic economists. On average, economists report to be highly happy with life. Satisfaction is positively related to spending more time on doing research. The lack of...

Gordon Tullock has been one of the most important founders and contributors to Public Choice. Two innovations are typical "Tullock Challenges". The first relates to method: the measurement of subjective well-being, or happiness. The second relates to digital social networks such as Facebook,...

In many countries environmental policies and regulations are implemented to improveenvironmental quality and thus individuals’ well-being. However, how do individuals valuethe environment? In this paper, we review the Life Satisfaction Approach (LSA) representinga new non-market valuation...

In many countries, TV viewers have access to more and more TVchannels. We study whether people can cope with this and watch the amount of TVthey find optimal for themselves or whether they are prone to over-consumption. Wefind that heavy TV viewers do not benefit, but instead report lower life...

A framework is proposed for organizing phenomena related to the (mis)predictionof utility, in particular neglecting adaptation. A categorization is introduced that accounts forasymmetries in misprediction. In decision-making, goods and activities satisfying extrinsicdesires are more salient than...