This paper explores a new theoretical and empirical approach to the assessment of human well-being, relevant to current challenges of social fragmentation in the presence of globalization and technological advance. We present two indexes of well-being - solidarity (S) and agency (A) - to be...

Cooperation among people who are not related to each other is sustained by the availability of punishment devices which help enforce social norms (Fehr and Gc̃hter, 2002). However, the rationale for costly punishment remains unclear. This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating...

A free market economy is characterized by an unequal distribution of income, wealth, and opportunities, to the extent that a considerable part of the population does not enjoy the wellbeing which an affluent society can offer. Recent studies have shown that excessive inequality is bad not only...

Do rising inequality and youth unemployment aect preferences for redistribution? Using country-level European survey data from 2002 to 2015, I show that changes in market inequality and the rise of (youth) unemployment increase preferences for redistribution. The ndings are supported by the...

Cooperation among people who are not related to each other is sustained by the availability of punishment devices which help enforce social norms (Fehr and Gächter, 2002). However, the rationale for costly punishment remains unclear. This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating...

We show how decentralized individual investments can efficiently allocate capital to innovating firms via equity crowdfunding. We develop a model where consumers have privately known consumption preferences and may act as investors. Consumers identify worthwhile investments based on their own...

The article is concerned with understanding the impact of social preferences and wealth inequality on aggregate economic outcomes. We investigate how different manifestations of societal other-regarding preferences affect labor relationships and incentive contracts at the microeconomic level and...

Despite a strong theoretical prediction that income skewness and redistribution should be positively linked, empirical evidence on this issue is mixed. This paper argues that it is important to distinguish between sources of changes in income skewness. Two sources of such changes are discussed:...