Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the idea currently rampant in the mainstream economics literature that it is relative rather than real income that is of most importance for individual well-being and that both evidence on expressed happiness and individual “choices” in...

The authors use two different data sources to confront the questton of whether a party's primary economic purpose is to sell spectal favors or alternatively to provide information and serve as an ideological label. Although not denying the proposition that politicians sell special favors, it...