This paper presents an application of the hedonic approach to measure the monetary price of social relations. We use micro data for housing and labor markets in the 103 Italian province capitals to estimate the price of relational amenities and construct monetary indices of quality of relational...

In this paper we analyze a two-sector growth model in which the utility function is not additively separable in consumption and “quality leisure time”. Differently from the main body of theoretical literature on quality leisure, we assume that the “productivity” of leisure is not...

This paper tests the relationship between time preferences and crime rates as posited by Davis (1988), whose theoretical analysis suggests that individuals’ attitude towards the future significantly affects their propensity to commit crime. Our empirical analysis is based on a panel of Italian...

We investigated whether preferences for living in a society with equal (or unequal) incomes were related to individual differences in how envious people were. Four studies measured dispositional envy with a scale developed by Smith et al. (1999). The first study showed that dispositional envy...

We study the distribution and evolution of payments in a Pay-What-You-Want restaurant. Despite missing price tags and despite the option to pay nothing at all, we observe that the vast majority of guests makes strictly positive payments. Over the two years covered by our data, average payments...

The influence of social capital on economic activities has been a central theme in the literature for quite a long time, but the relationship between social connectedness and school choice has not been addressed. If the primary objective of social capital is to create cohesiveness through the...

Hernstein and Murray (1994) famously argued that the division of labor in modern society is determined by individual differences in cognitive ability. This paper shows that differences in cognitive ability can also determine the division of labor in poor urban areas. We estimate the effect of IQ...

This paper examines the relation between observer-ratings of attractiveness and skin tone, weight, and height, and provides evidence on whether these physical characteristics affect the likelihood that individuals report discriminatory treatment in a variety of contexts. African Americans with...

This paper aims to explore how social capital is related to self-rated health status in Japan and how this relationship depends on the extent to which a person is embedded into the community. This study used data from 3079 adult participants in Japan's Social Policy and Social Consciousness...

Using individual data from Japan, this paper investigates how a neighbor's immobility is associated with individual investment in social capital. It is found that local homeownership has a positive effect on individual investment and that this effect for individual homeowners is about 2.5 times...