This study investigates the income-happiness puzzle in China by examining the trends in happiness and economic growth over the past two decades. It is the first long-term study in China to utilize a consistent national representative survey in the new century. Using data from the Chinese General...

Hardly any literature exists on the relationship between equivalence scales and poverty dynamics for transitional countries. We offer a new study on the impacts of equivalence scale adjustments on poverty dynamics in the Russian Federation, using equivalence scales constructed from subjective...

When economic crises destabilize labor markets, they offer unique opportunities to explore welfare dynamics and the interplay between partnership formation and social assistance. Using data from Sweden's 1990s economic crisis, characterized by high unemployment, expanding budget deficit, and a...

This study investigates whether couple ethnic composition shapes household welfare dependence, a relevant dimension overlooked in previous studies. Using fifteen years of Swedish panel data and a dynamic discrete-choice model that addresses initialconditions and unobserved heterogeneity, we...

This paper investigates the causal effects of agglomeration on hours worked by the self-employed. The IV estimations instrument for urbanization and localization using the minimum distance from the work Public Use Microdata Area centroid to the United States’ coastlines and estimated industry...

Recent studies have proposed causal machine learning (CML) methods to estimate conditional average treatment effects (CATEs). In this study, I investigate whether CML methods add value compared to conventional CATE estimators by re-evaluating Connecticut's Jobs First welfare experiment. This...

Most countries around the world implement some form of a safety net program for poor households. A widespread concern is that such programs crowd out private-sector jobs. But they could also improve workers' welfare by allowing them to take on more risk, for example through self-employment. This...

We examine the multi-generational association of a nationwide social pension program in China, the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS). NRPS was rolled out on full scale in 2012, and rural enrollees over the age of 60 are eligible to receive an average of 102 CNY non-contributory monthly pension. We...

We study the impact of a national cash transfer program in Vietnam on labor supply using large household surveys and a regression-discontinuity design based on discontinuity in age eligibility. We do not find evidence of a disincentive effect of the cash transfer on labor supply for adults aged...