We use nine waves of BHPS data to examine interactions between spouses in terms of a behaviour with important health repercussions: cigarette smoking. Partners' behaviours may be correlated due to matching in the marriage market, bargaining within marriage, or information revealed by others'...

This paper models the relationship between income and self-reported well-being using random-effect techniques applied to panel data from twelve European countries. We cannot distinguish empirically between heterogeneities in the utility function (translating income into utility) and the...

We use fourteen waves of the German panel data to ask whether individuals, after life and labour market events, return to some baseline wellbeing level. Although the strongest life satisfaction effect is often at the time of the event, significant lag and lead effects are present. Men are more...

A number of recent papers have found evidence of interdependencies in utility functions, in that, ceteris paribus, individual well-being falls as others' mean income or consumption increases. This paper asks if, in addition, the distribution of income in the reference group matters. I consider...

We study, in a model with unemployment, how labour market status affects the preferences for public spending, whether in the form of a public good or subsidies. We then derive the implications for the dynamics of government expenditures, under the hypothesis of majority voting.