Happiness research is on the rise, but is confounded by competing definitions of subjective well-being based on co-existing concepts, resulting in differing measures and giving rise to different potential policy applications. This paper motivates the societal necessity for using well-being...

Though decentralization for past one and half decade or so has become the most favoured policy priority among the policy makers yet the countries around the world differ dramatically in the degree of decentralization that is accommodated. While diversity in degree of decentralization across the...

While the strategy of measuring and quantifying has been extremely successful, and valuable in the progress of science, it does not follow that it is universally useful. We argue that attempts to measure corruption can be counterproductive in several different ways. Qualitative and action...

Cape Verde shifted from a socialist to a capitalistic model in the late 1980s. This shift enabled the population to benefit from rapid economic growth, but concerns have been expressed about a potential increase in inequality. Two household surveys with consumption data implemented in 1988–89...

This paper adopts a relative approach to the fulfillment of basic needs. It constructs a basic needs gap index (BNGI)to measure the performance of selected Muslim countries at three points of time 1987, 1991, and 1994

In certain respects, it seems expedient to describe a government as a homogeneous and self-interested entity, called ’Leviathan’. To optimize fiscal constraints, we need to know how powerful a Leviathan really is. This paper presents a new approach to measure the power of Leviathans. This...