People not only care about outcomes; they also value the procedures that lead to the outcomes. Procedural utility is an important source of human well-being. This paper aims at introducing the concept of procedural utility into economics, and argues that it should be incorporated more widely...

The Elgar Companion to Economics and Philosophy aims to demonstrate exactly how these two important areas have always been linked, and to illustrate the key areas of overlap. The contributors are well-known and distinguished authors from a variety of disciplines, who have been invited both to...

The self-employed are substantially more satisfied with their work than employed persons. We document this relationship for 23 countries and show that the higher job satisfaction can mainly be attributed to the more interesting jobs and to the greater autonomy that self-employed persons enjoy....

World governance today is characterized by international organizations lacking democratic legitimacy and control by the citizens they claim to represent. They are also criticized for being inefficient. This leads to violent protests and to NGOs having great influence. To address these problems,...

This paper intends to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and in which interesting directions it might develop. First, the current state of the research on happiness in economics is briefly discussed. We emphasize the potential of happiness research in...

Institutions affect bureaucrats' possibilities to acquire rents; they determine the degree of accountability and responsiveness of officials and of political control of the bureaucracy and, thereby, the size and distribution of rents in the public sphere. Those rents can involve higher wages,...

The distinguished authors in this volume address the fundamental causes for such heterogeneous international experiences, placing particular emphasis on the role of institutions. They demonstrate how the study of economic development is increasingly linked to the development of institutions,...