We use a rich longitudinal data set following a cohort of Swedish women from age 10 to 49 to analyse the effects of birth and early-life conditions on adulthood outcomes. These latter include both well-being and the stress hormone cortisol. Employment and marital status are important adult...

Internet usage in general and social networking platforms (SNPs) in particular have dramatically changed the way we spend our time. A relevant question is how this change in time-use affected the well-being of people in general and younger people in particular. We answer this question by...

In this paper we aim to use a posteriori approach to estimate the monetary compensation that would keep the individual's subjective well-being unchanged after experiencing traffic accidents. The coefficients of the life satisfaction equation, estimated with Swedish data collected in May 2020,...

Investigating preference for sons is a continuing focal area of development economics and demographic research. Son preference presents a challenge in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 'no poverty', 'good health and wellbeing', and 'gender equality' by 2030. It is...

A continuous and a discrete rating scale were implemented for a single item happiness question in a representative survey. A randomized controlled experiment enables unique analyses on data quality and distributions, which suggest superiority of the continuous scale. Results raise doubts about...

This paper studies the evolution of life satisfaction over the life course in Germany. It clarifies the causal interpretation of the econometric model by discussing the choice of control variables and the underidentification between age, cohort and time effects. The empirical part analyzes the...

The trends and consequences of terrorist activities are often captured by counting the number of incidents and casualties. More recently, the effects of terrorist acts on various aspects of the economy have been analyzed. These costs are surveyed and put in perspective. As economic consequences...

Cross-disciplinary ‘happiness research’ has made big progress in the measurement of individual welfare. This development makes it tempting to pursue the old dream of maximizing aggregate happiness as a social welfare function. However, we postulate that the appropriate approach is not to...

The monopoly position of the public bureaucracy in providing public services allows government employees to acquire rents. Those rents can involve higher wages, monetary and non-monetary fringe benefits (e.g. pensions and staffing), and/or bribes. We propose a direct measure to capture the total...