Recent studies have analysed the economic benefits of belonging to high-trust networks and the biological foundations of individual trust, but much scepticism remains regarding the precise role of trust in economic transactions, as well as gaps between micro and macro concepts of trust. This...

The economic consequences of corruption have been widely studied. A growing number of studies exists on the relationship between corruption and subjective wellbeing. However, very few studies have examined how individual experiences of corruption are correlated with subjective wellbeing. In this...

The monopoly position of the public bureaucracy in providing public services allows government employees to acquire rents. Those rents can involve higher wages, monetary and non-monetary fringe benefits (e.g., pensions and staffing), and/or bribes. We propose a direct measure to capture the...

Using survey data from rural Vietnam, this paper documents a statistically significant, positive effect of self-employment in farming on subjective well-being. Wage workers are less happy than farmers across a range of different types of wage jobs. These results suggest that structural...