of mental well-being? Denmark, for instance, regularly tops the league table of rich countries' happiness; Britain and …

We use four ways of the European Social Survey, covering 2000 to 2008, to analyze the effect of religion on happiness … lowers happiness while the latter raises it. We interpret this as evidence that the tangible aspects of religion (such as … the effects of belonging to an organized religion from the effect of holding religious beliefs, we find that the former …

Is human capital a robust predictor of good institutions? Using a new institutional quality measure, the International …

draw on a topical literature that deals with the fundamental causes of economic development. Our findings suggest that … specific determinants of long-run development operate via the rule of law, whereas others are not related to the rule of law at … all. Our empirical evidence does, however, support not only the "primacy of institutions" view, but also the important …

-colonial autocratic institutions within ethnic groups and the emergence of autocratic institutions across countries. Diversity has … amplified the importance of institutions in mitigating the adverse effects of non-cohesiveness on productivity, while … contributing to the scope for domination, leading to the formation of institutions of the autocratic type. …

In this paper we study how differences in the quality of countries' institutions affect the impact of natural hazards in … these countries. To do so, we first build a new data set that allows us to adequately control for countries' development and … output distance frontier model to assess two important aspects of the relation-ship between institutions and hazard impacts …

We propose and apply methods to quantify the impact of national institutions on international trade and development. We … are able to identify the direct impact of country-specific institutions on international trade within the structural … gravity framework. Our approach naturally addresses the prominent issue of endogenous institutions. The empirical analysis …

most countries around the world. Turning to the relationship between countries, we show that average life satisfaction is … higher in countries with greater GDP per capita. The magnitude of the satisfaction-income gradient is roughly the same …-being. Finally, studying changes in satisfaction over time, we find that as countries experience economic growth, their citizens …