Standard income inequality indices can be interpreted as a measure of welfare loss entailed in departures from equality of outcomes, for egalitarian social welfare functions defined on the distribution of outcomes. But such a welfare interpretation has been criticized for a long time on the...

We study the cost of being too patient on happiness. We find that the relationship between patience and various measures of subjective well-being is hump-shaped: it exists an optimal amount of patience that maximizes happiness. Beyond this optimal level, higher levels of patience have a negative...

This paper analyzes the early research performance of PhD graduates in labor economics, addressing the following questions: Are there major productivity differences between graduates from American and European institutions? If so, how relevant is the quality of the training received (i.e....

In this article, we lay out the basic case for wellbeing as the goal of government. We briefly review the history of this idea, which goes back to the ancient Greeks and was the acknowledged ideal of the Enlightenment. We then discuss possible measures on which a wellbeing orientation could be...

Over the last decades, empirical research on subjective well-being in the social sciences has provided a major new stimulus to the discourse on individual happiness. Recently this research has also been linked to economics where reported subjective wellbeing is often taken as a proxy measure for...

Given the recent efforts in several countries to reorganize the research institutional setting to improve research productivity, our analysis addresses the following questions: To which extent has the recent awareness over international quality standards in economics around the world been...

This study describes the prevalence and drinking patterns of alcohol consumption among adults (aged 15+ years) and explores the association between sociodemographic factors and alcohol consumption in Vietnam. A cross-sectional representative survey of 5,200 respondents from 12 provinces was...

Recently, papers have started combining the naming of two popular decomposition methods: the Oaxaca-Blinder method and the Kitagawa method, a popular method in demographics and sociology. Although the two approaches have the same objective in terms of decomposing outcome differences in some...

The population of most developed societies is ‘graying’. As life expectancy increases and thelarge baby-boom generation approaches retirement age, this has critical consequences formaintaining a high standard of living and the sustainability of pension systems. In the light ofthese labor-force...

Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here we...