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How interdependent are cross-country happiness dynamics?

How interdependent are cross-country happiness dynamics?
How interdependent are cross-country happiness dynamics?
We characterize evolution of cross-country happiness dynamics by two important factors. The first one concerns inertia, which we model in a non-linear and stochastic environment to reflect on how an agent’s own past level of happiness adapts to the current level. Second, we allow an explicit role of socio-economic ‘distance’ in facilitating dynamic interdependence among happiness levels. A series of hypotheses are tested on a long-time series data for a sample of twelve European countries. We find that inertia has a strong positive and non-linear effect on countries’ steady-state happiness convergence. The effects are more pronounced when relative income and macroeconomic variables are allowed to determine the correlation structure of happiness. The main novelty is the consideration of spatio-temporal dynamic aspects of happiness where complementarity in the latter across economies is rigorously tested and established. We find that after accounting for the effects of heterogenous socio-economic dynamics, cross-country happiness is indeed complementary: a unit rise in happiness level in one country raises happiness in others. Our analytical model and empirical findings have interesting socio-economic policy implications
0303-8300
491-518
Mishra, Tapas
218ef618-6b3e-471b-a686-15460da145e0
Parhi, Mamata
5e489f1d-9fe0-44b3-8027-bfa3ec6bfbd4
Fuentes, Raul
5b15227d-08d1-45e0-ba7a-8714870ec1eb
Mishra, Tapas
218ef618-6b3e-471b-a686-15460da145e0
Parhi, Mamata
5e489f1d-9fe0-44b3-8027-bfa3ec6bfbd4
Fuentes, Raul
5b15227d-08d1-45e0-ba7a-8714870ec1eb

Mishra, Tapas, Parhi, Mamata and Fuentes, Raul (2015) How interdependent are cross-country happiness dynamics? Social Indicators Research, 122, 491-518. (doi:10.1007/s11205-014-0692-9).

Record type: Article

Abstract

We characterize evolution of cross-country happiness dynamics by two important factors. The first one concerns inertia, which we model in a non-linear and stochastic environment to reflect on how an agent’s own past level of happiness adapts to the current level. Second, we allow an explicit role of socio-economic ‘distance’ in facilitating dynamic interdependence among happiness levels. A series of hypotheses are tested on a long-time series data for a sample of twelve European countries. We find that inertia has a strong positive and non-linear effect on countries’ steady-state happiness convergence. The effects are more pronounced when relative income and macroeconomic variables are allowed to determine the correlation structure of happiness. The main novelty is the consideration of spatio-temporal dynamic aspects of happiness where complementarity in the latter across economies is rigorously tested and established. We find that after accounting for the effects of heterogenous socio-economic dynamics, cross-country happiness is indeed complementary: a unit rise in happiness level in one country raises happiness in others. Our analytical model and empirical findings have interesting socio-economic policy implications

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Accepted/In Press date: 25 June 2014
Published date: July 2015
Organisations: Southampton Business School

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 380121
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/380121
ISSN: 0303-8300
PURE UUID: b7e8443a-8729-48b4-9ee3-611595792066
ORCID for Tapas Mishra: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6902-2326

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Date deposited: 03 Sep 2015 13:22
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:51

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Contributors

Author: Tapas Mishra ORCID iD
Author: Mamata Parhi
Author: Raul Fuentes

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