We argue that perceived fairness of the income generation process affects the association between income inequality and subjective well-being, and that there are systematic differences in this regard between countries that are characterized by a high or, respectively, low level of actual...

Using a panel of international student test scores 1980–2000 (PISA and TIMSS), panel fixed effects estimates suggest that government spending decentralization is conducive to student performance. The effect does not appear to be mediated through levels of educational spending.

The question whether a socially mobile society is conducive to subjective well-being (SWB) has rarely been investigated. This paper fills this gap by analyzing the SWB effects of intergenerational earnings mobility and equality in education at the societal level. Using socio-demographic...

Previous happiness research has explicitly assumed that subjective well-being is U-shaped in age. This paper sheds new light on this issue testing several functional forms. Using micro data from the World Values Survey on 44 000 persons in 30 economically advanced OECD countries with long life...

This paper empirically analyzes implications of market competition for generalized trust of about 80,000 individuals in about 60 countries. We find that competition amplifies the trust-generating effect of market integration for highly integrated individuals.

We empirically analyze the impact of fiscal and political decentralization on subjective well-being in a cross-section of 60,000 individuals from 66 countries. More spending or revenue decentralization raises well-being while greater local autonomy is beneficial only via government consumption...

Using a country panel of domestic terror attacks from 1998 to 2004, we empirically analyze the impact of government decentralization on terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces domestic terror, while political decentralization has no impact.

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use data from the 1991 to 2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) to analyze how income in China is related to calorie intake. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a variety of parametric, nonparametric, and semiparametric methods...