This paper provides unprecedented direct evidence from large-scale survey data on both the intensity (how much?) and direction (to whom?) of income comparisons. Income comparisons are considered to be at least somewhat important by three-quarters of Europeans. They are associated with both lower...

This paper provides unprecedented direct evidence from large-scale survey data on both the intensity (how much?) and direction (to whom?) of income comparisons. Income comparisons are considered to be at least somewhat important by three-quarters of Europeans. They are associated with both lower...

We examine the relationship between immigration and attitudes toward redistribution using a newly assembled data set of immigrant stocks for 140 regions of 16 Western European countries. Exploiting within-country variations in the share of immigrants at the regional level, we find that native...

This paper looks at the links between inequality of opportunity and views about the underlying processes that support economic success or failure. Unlike income inequality, inequality of opportunity isolates the extent to which inequality in circumstances beyond an individual's control...

This paper considers how lay theory and perceptions of issue ownership affect voters' expectations of political and economic developments. These expectations are likely to mediate the effects on subjective well-being of specific developments. Estimates employing a panel of 29 European countries...

The labor market is both a market and a "social institution". But what do we mean by that? In the first part of this article we analyze different interpretations of the labor market's "social" dimension, starting with the versions postulated by economists and ending with those that invoke...

The labor market is both a market and a "social institution". But what do we mean by that? In the first part of this article we analyze different interpretations of the labor market's "social" dimension, starting with the versions postulated by economists and ending with those that invoke...

This paper uses pseudo panel techniques and a fixed effects estimator to analyse the determinants of preferences for redistribution in 34 European countries over the period 2002-2012. The data is drawn from the six available waves of the European Social Survey. The main result is that changes in...

Drawing on the premise that the integration of economies revises people's social space and their comparators, we quantify social stress by aggregate relative deprivation, ARD; we calculate the effect of monetary mergers on ARD; and we document the validity of the superadditivity property of ARD...

Poor growth performance over the past decades in Europe has increased concerns for rising income dispersion and social exclusion. European authorities have recently launched the Europe 2020 strategy which aims to improve social inclusion in Europe on top of already existing European regional...