This study evaluates the potential impact of improved agricultural technologies on smallholders’ crop productivity and welfare. We use household-level data from Ethiopian Rural Household Survey collected by IFPRI in 1989-2009. The survey covers around 1500 rural households drawn from four regions and 15 rural villages. Endogenous treatment effect model is employed to account for the selection b...

Economic Approaches to Understanding Change in Happiness 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 reporting their subjective well-being as obser...

The happiness literature provides evidence on various factors, other than money, that do seem to contribute to individual happiness. As one explores the produced “happiness economics” literature, it is direct to understand the difficulty to find proper information on developing countries reality. In our analysis we investigate the relationship between income, family composition, health and reli...

Extra Status and Extra Stress: Are Promotions Good for Us? Promotions ordinarily involve higher wages and greater privileges; but they also often involve increased responsibility, accountability and work hours. Therefore, whether promotions are good for workers’ wellbeing is an empirical question. Using high-quality panel data we estimate preand post-promotion effects on job attributes, physica...

This paper examines regional differences in subjective well-being (SWB) in Germany. Inferential statistics indicate a diminishing but still significant gap between East and West Germany, but also differing levels of SWB within both parts. The observed regional pattern of life satisfaction reflects macroeconomic fundamentals, where labor market conditions play a dominant role. Differing levels o...

The life satisfaction approach has recently emerged as a new technique in the suite of options available to non-market valuation practitioners. Employing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this paper examines the influence of scenic amenity on the life satisfaction of residents of South East Queensland (SEQ),...

Physical stature is used as a proxy for the biological standard of living in the two Germanies before and after unification in an analysis of a cross-sectional sample (1998) of adult heights, as well as among military recruits of the 1990s. West Germans tended to be taller than East Germans throughout the period under consideration. Contrary to official proclamations of a classless society, the...

Using life satisfaction as a direct measure of individual utility has become popular in the empirical economic literature. In this context, it is crucial to know what circumstances or changes the measure is sensitive to. Is life satisfaction a volatile concept that is affected by minor changes in life circumstances? Or is it a reliable measure of personal happiness? This paper will analyze the ...

Well-Being over the Life Span: Semiparametric Evidence from British and German Longitudinal Data This paper applies semiparametric regression models using penalized splines to investigate the profile of well-being over the life span. Splines have the advantage that they do not require a priori assumptions about the form of the curve. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and...

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness... Or Does It? A Reconsideration Based on the Combined Effects of Wealth, Income and Consumption The accepted view among psychologists and economists alike is that economic well-being has a statistically significant but only weak effect on happiness/subjective well-being (SWB). This view is based almost entirely on weak relationships with household income. The paper ...