This paper examines whether access to modern information technologies, in particular the internet, has an impact on invididual positionality - meaning the degree to which subjective well-being is affected by income relative to others rather than absolute income. We provide empirical evidence...

Are people condemned to an inherent level of experienced happiness? A review of the economic research on subjective well-being gives reason to the assessment that happiness can change. First, empirical findings clearly indicate that people are not indifferent to adverse living conditions when...

This paper identifies opportunities for increasing individual wellbeing to provide a basis for its measurement and improvement. Opportunities for increasing wellbeing exist in the private, non-profit and government sectors by introducing elements of network governance to complement, restrain and...

This paper presents econometric evidence for a link between a country's level of egalitarianism and its inward foreign direct investment. In order to provide a theoretical rationale for this relationship, I embed Hart and Moore's (2008) novel contractual foundation into a simple model of global...

We investigate the norm of just deserts and its effect on honesty. Just deserts is an essential norm in a market society, and honesty is an important factor in economic and social exchange. In particular, we analyze what happens when the social distributive rules betray the reasonable...

The living wage standard has emerged as a norm in global initiatives targeting supply chain labor practices. This is unexpected, because the living wage, if actually paid, could impose substantial new supply chain costs. There is also considerable disagreement on how to calculate a living wage...

This paper juxtaposes changes over the last forty years in income growth and distribution with the mortality changes recorded at the aggregate level in about 170 countries and at the individual level in 26 countries with at least two demographic and health surveys covering the last twenty years....

We use several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to undertake international, intertemporal, and global comparisons of well-being. The conclusions emerging from the analysis are that our well-being measures drastically change our impression of levels of...

We use several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to undertake intertemporal and global comparisons of well-being. The conclusions emerging from the intertemporal analysis are that the impact of these measures on temporal trends in well-being is...

Do people care about income inequality and does income inequality affect subjective well-being? Welfare theories can predict either a positive or a negative impact of income inequality on subjective well-being and empirical research has found evidence on a positive, negative or non significant...