Recent studies focused on testing the Easterlin hypothesis (happiness and national income correlate in the cross-section but not over time) on a global level. We make a case for testing the Easterlin hypothesis at the country level where individual panel data allow exploiting important...

Recent studies focused on testing the Easterlin hypothesis (happiness and national income correlate in the cross-section but not over time) on a global level. We make a case for testing the Easterlin hypothesis at the country level where individual panel data allow exploiting important...

This article sheds light on the important differences in self-declared happiness across countries of similar affluence. It hinges on the different happiness statements of natives and immigrants in a set of European countries to disentangle the influence of objective circumstances versus...

This article sheds light on the important differences in self-declared happiness across countries of equivalent affluence. It hinges on the different happiness statements of natives and immigrants in a set of European countries to disentangle the influence of objective circumstances versus...

Recent studies focused on testing the Easterlin hypothesis (happiness and national income correlate in the cross-section but not over time) on a global level. We make a case for testing the Easterlin hypothesis at the country level where individual panel data allow exploiting important...

This paper analyses subjective economic well-being in several Eastern European countries from 1991 to 1995. Economic well-being explains a significant part of the variation in overall life satisfaction of Eastern Europeans. In an ordered logit model, the determinants of subjective economic...

Until now there was little evidence of the influence of large governments on happiness and when it existed, it was positive. We show that structural government consumption and other measures of long-term government imbalances significantly decrease happiness and life satisfaction in European...

The authors update previous findings on the total East-West gap in overall life satisfaction and its trend by using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1992 to 2013. Additionally, the East-West gap and its trend are separately analyzed for men and women as well as for...

Using self reported measures of life satisfaction and risk attitudes, we empirically test whether there is a relationship between individuals inequality and risk aversion. The empirical analysis uses the German SOEP household panel for the years 1997 to 2007 to conclude that the negative effect...

After a decade of strong progress toward the goal of reducing the high levels of income disparities, there are clear signs of a deceleration in the pace of inequality reduction in Latin America. This paper argues that the deceleration is the result of two set of reasons. First, several of the...