http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-hap Economics of Happiness 2013-05-05 Viviana Di Giovinazzo http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2013/07&r=hap <p style="margin-bottom:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height: normal; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"">The consequences of tobacco control policies for individual welfare are difficult to assess. We therefore evaluate the impact of smoking bans and cigarette prices on subjective well-being by analyzing data for 40 European countries and regions between 1990 and 2011. We exploit the staggered introduction of bans and apply an imputation strategy to study the effect of anti-smoking policies on people with different propensities to smoke. We find that higher cigarette prices reduce the life satisfaction of likely smokers. Overall, smoking bans are not related to subjective well-being, but increase the life satisfaction of smokers who recently failed to quit smoking. The latter finding is consistent with cue-triggered models of addiction and the idea of bans as self-control devices.</span> Reto Odermatt, Alois Stutzer 2013 Smoking bans, cigarette prices, life satisfaction, addiction, self-control, tobacco, control policies http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ent:wpaper:wp49&r=hap We provide non experimental evidence of the relevance of sociability on subjective wellbeing by investigating the determinants of life satisfaction on a large sample of Europeans aged above 50. We document that voluntary work, religious attendance, helping friends/neighbours and participation to community-related organizations affect positively and significantly life satisfaction. We illustrate the different impact that some sociability variables have on eudaimonic versus cognitive measures of subjective wellbeing. Our empirical findings discriminate among other regarding and self-regarding preferences as rationales explaining such behaviour. We document that different combinations between actions and motivations have different impact on life satisfaction thereby providing support for the relevance of these specific "contingent goods" and to the literature of procedural utility. Our findings are confirmed in robustness checks including refinements of the dependent variable, instrumental variables and sensitivity analysis on departures from the exogeneity assumption. Leonardo Becchetti, Luisa Corrado, Pierluigi Conzo 2013-04 Tsunami, sociability, altruism, other-regarding activities, other regarding motivations, life satisfaction, subjective well-being