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...

In this paper we compare the new satisfaction evaluation approach, developed in the nineties by Oswald, Clark, Blanchflower and others with the older income evaluation (IEQ) approach, developed by Van Praag and Kapteyn in the seventies of the previous century. We find that both approaches yield...

The question that this paper addresses is whether or not parents are altruistic towards their children. A new approach will be introduced, where the life satisfaction data of parents will be regressed onto the living conditions of their children who now live independently. After controlling for...

We quantify the value of changes in life circumstances in Germany following reunification. To this end, we develop and implement a fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find strong negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently...

Les programmes de réduction des inégalités entre les pays et entre individus ont suscité le réveil des consciences sur la problématique de la pauvreté et favorisé la mise en œuvre de techniques de mesure et d’analyse. Au Burkina Faso, les stratégies de réduction de la pauvreté...

Dans ce papier, le modèle markovien a été utilisé pour analyser la dynamique de la pauvreté au Bénin. En supposant que les changements d’états de bien-être observés au niveau d’un ménage se présentent comme une chaîne de Markov, la méthode de « first-step-analysis » a été...

Published in: Luigino Bruni and Pierluigi Porta (eds.), 'Economics and Happiness. Framing the Analysis', Oxford University Press, 2005.

We quantify the value of changes in life circumstances in Germany following reunification. To this end, we develop and implement a fixed-effect estimator for ordinal life satisfaction in the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find strong negative effects on life satisfaction from being recently...

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 this paper we address the puzzle of the relation between age and happiness. Whilst the majority of psychologists have concluded there is not much of a relationship at all, the economic literature has unearthed a possible U-shape relationship. In this paper we replicate the U-shape for the...