This book takes Italy as a case study, focusing on the financial performance of retail energy firms between 2008 and 2017, to provide an up-to-date and critical analysis of this sizeable shift that has taken place within the European energy sector.

Following the liberalization of EU energy markets, more than three hundred gas and electricity companies entered the market to substitute state-run monopolies. A sizeable shift has taken place within the European energy sector, one that remains only partially understood at best. Focusing on the...

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the link between income and subjective well-being. We find that, for the whole sample of nineteen European countries, although income is positively correlated with both happiness and life satisfaction, reference income exerts a...