Subjective well-being (SWB) is generally argued to rise with relative income. However, direct evidence is scarce on whether and how intensively individuals undertake income comparisons, to whom they relate, and what they perceive their relative income to be. In this paper, novel data with direct...

In a simple conceptual framework, we organize a multitude of phenomena related to the (mis)prediction of utility. Consequences in terms of distorted choices and lower wellbeing emerge if people have to trade-off between alternatives that are characterized by attributes satisfying extrinsic...

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990-2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development, and...

The thoughts that an individual has about the future contribute substantially to their life satisfaction in a positive or negative direction. This is a result found via five different methods, some of which control for personality and disposition and the potential endogeneity of thoughts and...

This paper analyzes whether individuals have equal opportunity to achieve happiness (or wellbeing). We estimate sibling correlations and intergenerational correlations in self-reported life satisfaction, satisfaction with household income, job satisfaction, and satisfaction with health. We find...

We consider the link between poverty and subjective well-being, and focus in particular on potential adaptation to poverty. We use panel data on almost 45,800 individuals living in Germany from 1992 to 2011 to show first that life satisfaction falls with both the incidence and intensity of...

We consider the link between poverty and subjective well-being, and focus in particular on the role of time. We use panel data on 49,000 individuals living in Germany from 1992 to 2012 to uncover three empirical relationships. First, life satisfaction falls with both the incidence and intensity...

Sleep is an important part of life, with an individual spending an estimated 32 years of her life asleep. Despite this importance, little is known about life satisfaction and sleep duration. Using German panel data, it is shown that sleep is an important factor for life satisfaction and that...

When incomes are exogenously given, a progressive tax structure reduces inequality in the sense that the Lorenz curve of after tax incomes is nowhere below that of before tax incomes whatever the circumstances as it was shown by U. Jakobsson (Journal of Public Economics 5 (1976), 161-168) The...

Simula and Trannoy (2007) have shown that ELIE is confronted with implementation issues when the policymaker cannot observe the time worked by every individual. This paper tries to fix this problem. To this aim, it characterizes the second-best allocations which are the closest to ELIE (i) in...