This paper provides unheard direct evidence that comparisons exert a significant effect on subjective well-being. It also evaluates the relative importance of different types of benchmarks. Dynamic comparisons outweigh static ones. Internal benchmarks are more important than external reference...

The enlargement of the European Union towards the East from May 2004 has generated an increase of about 100 million inhabitants in the EU-15, and has especially brought along big challenges and important opportunities both for the new countries and for the ""Old Europe"". This is the main idea...

This paper investigates how housing prices respond to economic, financial and demographic conditions in emerging markets in Europe. We use quarterly data covering 10 countries over the period 1998-2022 and implement a panel quantile regression approach to obtain a granular analysis of real...

A fragile recovery continues in the Middle East and Central Asia region. The region has made good progress since the beginning of the year, but new challenges have emerged. They include a pandemic wave in countries with weak vaccination progress and rising inflation, which has contributed to...

Using a new set of micro evidence from an original survey of 28 transition countries, we show that democracy increases citizens' support for the market by guaranteeing income redistribution to inequality-averse agents. Our identification strategy relies on the restriction of the sample to...