In normative public economics it is crucial to know how fast the marginal utility of income declines as income increases. One needs this parameter for cost-benefit analysis, for optimal taxation and for the (Atkinson) measurement of inequality. We estimate this parameter using four large...

Subjective wellbeing data is becoming increasingly popular in economics research. The wellbeing valuation approach uses wellbeing data instead of data gleaned from preferences to attach monetary values to non-market goods. This method could be an important alternative to preference-based...

Conventional cost-benefit analysis incorporates the normally reasonable assumption that the policy or project under examination is marginal in the sense that it will not significantly change relative prices. In particular, it is assumed that the policy or project does not change the underlying...

This article introduces our project on the relationship between railways and real income levels across European regions between 1870 and 1910. While similar relationships have been analysed for the USA, India and individual European countries, our project is the first to take a pan-European...

In this paper we implement a powerful empirical approach than has not previously been applied to rail transport evaluation to ascertain how much consumers value rail access. We study the effects on house prices of a transport innovation that altered the distance to the nearest station for some...

Developing countries are vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, yet there is disagreement about what they should do to protect themselves from antic- ipated damages. In particular, it is unclear what the optimal balance is between investments in traditional productive capital...

In order to value non-market goods, economists estimate individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these goods using revealed or stated preference methods. We compare these conventional approaches with subjective well-being (SWB), which is based on individuals’ ratings of their happiness or...

This paper is about net national product (NNP). We are concerned with what NNP means, what it should include, what it offers us and, therefore, why we may be interested in it. We show that NNP, properly defined, can be used as a gauge for project evaluation, but we also show that it should not...

This paper investigates how corrupt public officials and firms adjust to policy reforms that change opportunities for bribery deals to take place. I take advantage of an exogenously determined tariff liberalization program that altered opportunities to extract bribes through a particular method...

This paper investigates how corrupt public officials and private agents adjust to policy reforms that change opportunities for bribery deals to take place. I exploit an exogenously determined tariff liberalization program that altered opportunities to extract bribes through a particular method...