Volunteering, happiness and public policy

[…] recipient of the volunteer’s activities? We analyze this relationship and apply matching estimators to the large-scale British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set to estimate the causal impact of volunteering on happiness. We take into account personality traits that could jointly determine volunteering behaviour and happiness. We find that the causal impact of volunteering […]

First equals most important? Order effects in vignette-based measurement

[…] situation or object which respondents are asked to judge. The object is described as having different dimensions, the values of which are experimentally varied, so that their impact on respondents’ judgments can be estimated. We examine 1) whether the order in which dimensions are presented impacts estimates, and 2) under which conditions order effects […]

Job loss fears and (extremist) party identification: first evidence from panel data

[…] of how perceived economic insecurity impacts on political preferences. Using seventeen years of household panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine whether job loss fears impact on individuals’ party identification. Consistent with the deprivation theory, we find strong and robust evidence that subjective job loss fears foster affinity for parties at the […]

The Great Recession and the distribution of household income

[…] countries. To what extent were household incomes affected by this event, and how did the effects differ across countries? This is the first cross-national study of the impact of the Great Recession on the distribution of household incomes. Looking at real income levels, poverty rates, and income inequality, it focusses on the period 2007-9, […]