In this paper we test the Rational Expectations hypothesis using longitudinal data on expectations and realizations of individual welfare for East Germans in the years following reunification. German reunification was unexpected and delivered a large shock to the future prospects of the...

In recent years considerable interest has developed in going 'beyond GDP' to develop measures of economic progress which are more explicitly based on human wellbeing. This work has been inspired, in part, by Sen's non-utilitarian approach to welfare economics, but has been constrained by a lack...

This paper examines the importance of relative deprivation in Tanzania, a poor African country, using three waves of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey. We contribute to earlier literature in Africa by controlling for time persistent unobservable individual characteristics (panel data) and by...

Wealth is far from being a homogeneous and monolithic concept. Wealth can be positive or negative (e.g. assets versus debts), more or less accessible (e.g. bank accounts versus housing wealth), and more or less time-constrained (e.g. cars versus bonds and mutual funds). These different forms of...

Numerous papers have documented a positive association between height and good physical health and also with good economic outcomes such as earnings. A smaller number have argued for an association with well-being. In this paper, cross-country data from Europe is used to analyse whether...

In the present paper we attempt to analyse the relationship between "lifestyle" and happiness in the UK using fixed effects and granger causality tests to test for endogeneity. We split the analysis by gender and find different effects between women and men. While men seem to be more physically...