Rising unemployment and falling living standards are two of the main problems facing policymakers in economies in transition. The case of Albania is distinctive, because high unemployment has been associated with a very large private sector and by far the greatest scale of temporary emigration...

The paper analyzes self-reported measures of satisfaction with life in a transition country, Kyrgyzstan, using 1993 household survey data. The authors test whether higher levels of satisfaction are associated with greater economic well-being. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the data....