This note elaborates an extension of the paper 'Social Norms, the Welfare State, and Voting' by Lindbeck, Nyberg, and Weibull [1]. That paper studies the effects of a social norm against living off others work. In the welfare-state context of their model, this means that individuals who live on...

What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust? To answer this question, we use the reunification of Germany as a natural experiment and study the post-reunification trajectory of convergence with regard to individuals' trust and risk, as well...

Eine gängige These des Wertewandels lautet: Neue "postmaterialistische" Werte wie Emanzipation und Selbstentfaltung lösen traditionell bürgerliche Werte wie sozialer Aufstieg und ökonomische Sicherheit ab. Ursache diese Wandels, so die Theorie, ist die nachhaltige Verbesserung der...

Finland is characterized by a substantial heterogeneity across its regions. Key economic indicators, such as the GDP per capita and the unemployment rate, vary widely for different areas, with Uusimaa, the region where Helsinki is located, being significantly richer than regions such as Kainuu...

When measuring inequality, value judgements are imposed, often implicitly, at several stages. In particular, the choice of ‘welfare metric', adult equivalence scale, unit of analysis and the inequality measure itself cannot avoid value judgements. This paper illustrates the effects of using...

Die AfD war bei der Bundestagswahl in Ostdeutschland etwa doppelt so erfolgreich wie in Westdeutschland. Beobachter machten dafür bisher vor allem wirtschaftliche Faktoren verantwortlich. Wir können dagegen zeigen, dass nicht das ökonomische Ungerechtigkeitsgefühl, sondern die Ablehnung von...

Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to...

We link life-satisfaction data to inequality of the pre- and post-government income distribution at the regional level, to estimate the degree of inequality aversion. Three different inequality measures are used. In addition, we investigate whether a reduction in inequality by the state...