The study highlights the large and rising cost of the disease: an estimated $132 billion, or approximately $92 billion in direct healthcare expenditures and $40 billion in lost productivity attributed to missed workdays, disability, and early mortality. After adjusting for differences in...

The rising trends both in drug addiction and crime rates are of major public concern in Germany. Surprisingly, the economic theory of crime seems to ignore the drugs-crime nexus, whereas the criminological literature considers illicit drug use a main reason of criminal activities. This paper...

At present, a first round of hospital benchmarking as required by German law on health care reform takes place. After extensive discussions between hospitals and insurance companies, which are jointly responsible to deliver benchmarking results, a method with some peculiar characteristics was...

Are happiness patterns structurally the same when comparing poor and rich countries? Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show that the relationships between subjective well-being and socioeconomic variables have a similar structure and is U-shaped in age in South Africa as in...

This paper analyses subjective economic well-being in several Eastern European countries from 1991 to 1995. Economic well-being explains a significant part of the variation in overall life satisfaction of Eastern Europeans. In an ordered logit model, the determinants of subjective economic...

This paper is the first of its kind to study quality of life responses of crime victims. Using cross-sectional data from the OHS97 survey of South Africa, we show that victims report significantly lower well-being than the non-victims, ceteris paribus. Happiness is lower for nonvictimized...

This paper aims to test empirically if certain frequently used measures of well-being, which are regarded as valuable properties of human life, are actually desired by people. In other words, it investigates whether the “expert judgments” in social science overlap with social consensus on...

If bigger objects go into a jar, then there will be space to fill it with smaller objects in sequence. If the order of the objects are reversed, then it ends in filling it at the starting point. Happiness in life is similar to this. Fill high priority needs in the life, and smaller needs can be...

During the 1980s, the Peruvian society was deeply affected by two significant events: a) the economic crisis that ended in recession and hyperinflation and, b) the spread of political violence, in particular in Ayacucho, in the central Andean highlands. Taking this into account, the conditions...

Emphasis on market-friendly macroeconomic and development strategies in recent years has resulted in deleterious effects on growth and well- being, and has done little to promote greater gender equality. This paper argues that the example of East Asia states, which recognized their position as...