This paper explores the determinants of individual well-being as measured by self-reported levels of satisfaction with income. Making full use of the panel data nature of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide empirical evidence for well-being depending on absolute and on relative levels of...

Typically, laboratory experiments suffer from homogeneous subject pools and self-selectionbiases. The usefulness of survey data is limited by measurement error and by thequestionability of their behavioral relevance. Here we present a method integrating interactiveexperiments and representative...