A fundamental issue for economists is what determines civil conflict. One unsettled question is the relative importance of political freedoms versus economic development. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data based on surveys of revolutionary preferences of...

Although property rights are the cornerstone of capitalist economics, throughout history existing claims have been frequently overturned and redefined by revolution. A fundamental question for economists is what makes revolutions more likely to occur. A large literature has found contradictory...

A fundamental question about the determinants of civil conflict is the relative importance of political freedoms versus economic development. This paper takes a new approach to provide an answer by using micro-data based on surveys of revolutionary tastes of 130,000 people living in 61 nations...

This chapter focuses on the question of how formal institutions, like those governing the level of freedom, the regulatory state, political parties and the generosity of the welfare state, affect self-reported well-being. The evidence suggests, for example, that more freedom, as well as...

We test for whether, once "basic needs" are satisfied, there is happiness adaptation to further gains in income using three data sets. Individual German Panel Data from 1985-2000, and data on the well-being of over 600,000 people in a panel of European countries from 1975-2002, shows different...