This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

I propose two new tests of Falk and Knell's (2004)prediction that individuals'reference income increases with ability. To overcome the difficulty that the reference income is not observed in existing large data sets, I extend Falk and Knell's model to establish a link between immigrants'...

Many studies have estimated the effect of circumstances on income acquisition. Perhaps surprisingly, the fraction of inequality attributable to circumstances is usually quite small - in the advanced democracies, on the order of 20%. One reason for this is the lack of data on circumstance...