Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence

Christian Bjørnskov, Axel Dreher and Justina A. V. Fischer

No 08-192, KOF Working papers from KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich

Abstract: A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent cross-country studies on the institutions-happiness association. Our findings suggest that the conclusions reached by previous studies are fairly sensitive to the specific measure of 'happiness' used. In addition, the results indicate that the welfare effects of policies may differ across phases of a country's economic development. This bears important policy implications which we discuss in the concluding section of the paper.

Keywords: Happiness; Institutions; Policy implications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2008-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-005626337 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Formal institutions and subjective well-being: Revisiting the cross-country evidence (2010)
Working Paper: Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence (2010)
Working Paper: Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence (2009)
Working Paper: Formal Institutions and Subjective Well-Being: Revisiting the Cross-Country Evidence (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kof:wpskof:08-192

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in KOF Working papers from KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().