Individuals’ aversion to risk and inequality, and their concern for relative standing, are measured through experimental choices between hypothetical societies. It is found that on average individuals are both fairly inequality-averse and have a strong concern for relative income. The results...

This paper examines whether the subjective well-being of migrants is responsive to fluc- tuations in macroeconomic conditions in their country of origin. Using the German Socio- Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2009 and macroeconomic variables for 24 countries of origin, we exploit...

We show how to minimize the probability of misclassifying individuals as being poor or not poor when data on some of their relevant attributes are missing, but an estimate of the population distribution of attributes is available.

We investigate the importance of relative income within the Indian Caste system, using a choice experiment. We find that slightly more than half of the marginal utility of income comes from some kind of relative income effects, on average, which is comparable to the results from previous studies...

We find, using survey-experimental methods, that most individuals are concerned with both relative income and relative consumption of particular goods. The degree of concern varies in the expected direction depending on the properties of the good. However, contrary to what has been suggested in...

We give an objective meaning to the concept of taxable capacity and establish a theoretical link between Optimal Taxation Theory (OTT) and the proposals of the Carter and Meade Reports, solving at the same time Kay’s (2008) criticism to both approaches.

By now, there is a wide range of methods to construct multidimensional well-being indices, differing in the way they transform, aggregate and weight the relevant dimensions. This paper uses a fuzzy theory approach to propose a new weighting scheme for the dimensions. These weights play a crucial...

We perform development accounting in accordance with Weil (2005, 2007) in a cross-state analysis of India. Results of similar magnitude are found, demonstrating that health can account for 1% to 18% of income differences depending on the health measure.

Daylight Saving Time is controversial due to its alleged negative impact on individual well-being. Using panel data from Germany we find evidence that the transition to summer time has negative influence on general life satisfaction and mood, which is stronger for those in full time employment.