Search

This emerging field broadens economic analysis by using measures of subjective well-being to help address a core issue in economics--how to make best use of scarce resources--by redefining 'best use.' [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2010.01592.x Byline: John F. Helliwell (1), Christopher P. Barrington-Leigh (1) Abstract: Abstract. Increasing attention is being paid in academic, policy, and public arenas to subjective measures of well-being. This promising trend represents a shift towards measuring positive outcomes in psychology and greater realism in the study of economic behaviour. We describe the main measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and provide examples of policy-relevant research findings, including new accountings of the differences in individual-level SWB assessments around the world and across Canada. These suggest a consistent pattern of life circumstances linked to SWB and highlight the importance of social factors whose role has otherwise been hard to quantify in income-equivalent terms. Abstract (Spanish): Mesurer et comprendre le bien-etre subjectif. On porte de plus en plus d'attention aux mesures subjectives de bien-etre dans les mondes de l'universite, des politiques publiques et de l'opinion generale. Cette tendance prometteuse tend a accentuer un deplacement vers la mesure de resultats positifs en psychologie, et vers un plus grand realisme dans l'etude du comportement economique. On decrit les principales mesures de bien-etre subjectif (BES), et on donne des exemples de resultats de recherche qui ont une importance pour la definition de politiques, y compris de nouvelles comptabilites des differences dans les evaluations des mesures de BES au plan individuel tant de par le monde qu'a travers le Canada. Voila qui suggere un pattern consistent de niveaux de vie relie aux mesures de BES et qui souligne l'importance de facteurs sociaux dont le role est d'autre part difficile a quantifier en termes d'equivalence de revenus. Author Affiliation: (1)Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

In this paper we suggest an improved methodology for comparing the intensity of trade across and within national and provincial boundaries. Earlier efforts to assess border effects for provinces or for countries without internal trade statistics made fairly arbitrary assumptions about average distances for internal trade flows. We improve on earlier efforts by taking more complete account of the distribution of population within each province or country. Internal distance is estimated as a population-weighted average of intra-city and intercity distances as well as distances to and within rural areas. We find higher estimates of internal distances, and hence border effects, than found in previous studies.

The persistence of high savings-investment correlations and home-country bias in portfolio construction at the national level is contrasted with new evidence on savings behaviour in Canadian provinces. We confirm that national borders clearly divert flows of capital to domestic investments, but provincial borders have no such effect. In particular, while there is a significant correlation between national savings and investment, among provinces that effect disappears. We discuss the implications for interpreting the distinction between provincial and national borders.

Using a gravity model of 1988-90 merchandise trade flows among Canadian provinces and between Canadian provinces and U.S. states, this paper, building on earlier work by McCallum, shows that Quebec trades twenty times more with other provinces than it does with U.S. states of similar size and distance. Comparison with survey evidence shows that these internal trade linkages are far stronger than previously was thought. The possible implications for Quebec separation, and for international economics, are considerable. If more broadly confirmed, the results imply that the fabric of national economies is far tighter than that of the global trading system, even for countries operating without substantial trade barriers.

Internal migration in Canada since the 1960s has been characterized by a shift of populations towards wealthier provinces. This was equally true in the case of foreign immigration in the country. It was observed that such population influx hardly benefited destination provinces because of diminishing returns. The eventual convergence or reduction in disparity among provinces may have been partly caused by migration, which in turn was caused by regional disparity in income and employment.

The extent and pace of macroeconometric modeling have increased on a global scale. Countries besides the US are engaging in more modeling activity, and the use of global and multi-country models is increasing. Economists are avoiding the problem of estimating parameters using a single economy by using comparative data from several nations. In addition, economists are studying and modeling how the structure of international economies is affected by globalization.

This article summarises recent empirical research on the determinants of subjective well-being. Results from national and international samples suggest that measures of social capital, including especially the corollary measures of specific and general trust, have substantial effects on well-being beyond those flowing through economic channels. Cross-national samples (supported by parallel analysis of suicide data) show large well-being effects from the quality of government. Finally, using well-being data to estimate the income-equivalents non-financial aspects of the workplace produces numbers so large as to suggest the existence of unexploited opportunities to improve both employee satisfaction and enterprise efficiency.

The paper deals with three issues that are central to the combined use of intranational and international data to estimate the economic consequences of national borders. The first issue concerns the measurement of trading distances for transactions that take place within a country or region. The second issue relates to the use of coefficients from an estimated gravity relationship to express the border effect in terms of an equivalent distance. The author proposes a technique to avoid problems that have beset earlier attempts to do this. The third issue is the need to ensure that the border and distance effects are estimated independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]