When is one distribution (of income, consumption, or some other economic variable) more equal or better than another? This question has proven difficult to answer in situations where distribution functions intersect and no unambiguous ranking can be attained without introducing weaker criteria...

For many countries the Industrial Revolution was an opportunity for a dynamic economic development, but it was accompanied by deep social changes. Inequali-ties between regions have deepened, pollution has increased and also conjunctural fluctuations have intensified. In contemporary view at the...

In this paper we use an OLG model where agents are heterogeneous within each generation, differing in their impatience rate. We show that the effects of a capital-using technological change are not symmetric between agents and can cause a reduction in consumption. The asymmetry in impatience...

This study aims at performing an econometric analysis of the credit expansion process and social welfare from a comparative perspective, with a focus on eight developing and advanced economies from Central and South-Eastern Europe (including the case of Romania). The author aims to better...

We propose a general framework to unambiguously compare distributions functions in an economically interpretable way. Our framework provides complete ranking of any set of distributions and money metric interpretation of the social welfare level of a dominating distribution as compared to a...

The study examines welfare changes in China during the reform period (1978 - ) by analysing various welfare indicators, the causes of change, and the shifting models.

Cross-disciplinary ‘happiness research’ has made big progress in the measurement of individual welfare. This development makes it tempting to pursue the old dream of maximizing aggregate happiness as a social welfare function. However, we postulate that the appropriate approach is not to...

The goal of this paper is to compare the well-being of young children in Canada, Norway and the United States. Many economic models focus on children's eventual well-being by adopting an investment perspective. While this is important, children's well-being today should also count when we assess...

Productivity data on the business sector, which covers around 75% of the economy, provide important information on the evolution of living standards. The data on multifactor productivity (MFP) growth and labor productivity growth produced by the official statistical agency in Canada (Statistics...

If a nation's economic performance improves, how much extra happiness does that buy its citizens? Most public debate assume -without real evidence- that the answer is a lot. This paper examines the question by using information on the well-being in Western countries.