This paper discusses the role of relational goods and television viewing for individual happiness. Using individual data from the World Values Survey, we find evidence of a positive effect of relationality on life satisfaction, and a negative effect of television viewing on relational activities. Both relationships are strongly significant and robust to the use of alternative indicators of relationality. The results are also robust to estimation by instrumental variables to deal with possible simultaneity. We interpret these findings as an indication that the pervasive and increasing role of television viewing in contemporary society, through its crowding out effect on relational activities, contributes to the explanation of the income-happiness paradox.JEL Classification: A12, D12, I31

This paper tests the rational-choice approach to fertility decisions by investigating the relationship between parenthood and well-being in a large sample of individuals from 94 countries. We find that worldwide, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, having children has a negative effect on well-being. Conditioning on age, gender, marital status and education can only partially help to interpret this finding. We show that the negative effect of parenthood on well-being is explained by a large adverse impact on financial satisfaction, that on average dominates the positive impact on nonfinancial satisfaction. The results are robust to alternative empirical specifications and to the inclusion of the reported ideal number of children as a proxy variable to address the endogeneity of parenthood decisions.JEL Classification: A13, D10, D61, I31, J17

This paper presents an experimental investigation of strong indirect reciprocity. We examine both generalized indirect reciprocity (if A helps B then B helps C) and social indirect reciprocity (if A helps B then C helps A), in a setting where reciprocal behavior cannot be explained by strategic motivations. We also consider a treatment for direct reciprocity, as a benchmark, and use a variant of the strategy method to control for differences in first movers' actions across treatments. We find evidence of strong reciprocity within each treatment, both for strategies and decisions. Generalized indirect reciprocity is found to be significantly stronger than social indirect reciprocity and, interestingly, direct reciprocity. This finding is interpreted as reflecting the relevance of first movers' motivation for second movers' reciprocal behavior.

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This paper presents new evidence on the effects of attendance on academic performance. We exploit a large panel data set for Introductory Microeconomics students to explicitly take into account the effect of unobservable factors correlated with attendance, such as ability, effort and motivation. We find that neither proxy variables nor instrumental variables provide a viable solution to the omitted variable bias. Panel estimators indicate that attendance has a positive and significant impact on performance. Lecture and classes have a similar effect on performance individually, although their impact cannot be identified separately. Overall, the results indicate that, after controlling for unobservable student characteristics, teaching has an important independent effect on learning.JEL Classification: A22, I21.

This article investigates fund-raising mechanisms based on a prize as a way to overcome free riding in the private provision of public goods. We focus on an environment characterised by income heterogeneity and incomplete information about income levels. Our analysis compares experimentally the performance of a lottery, an all-pay auction and a benchmark voluntary contribution mechanism. We find that prize-based mechanisms perform better than voluntary contribution in terms of public good provision. Contrary to the theoretical predictions, contributions are significantly higher in the lottery than in the all-pay auction, both overall and by individual income types.

This paper presents new evidence on the effects of attendance on academic performance. We exploit a large panel data set for Introductory Microeconomics students to explicitly take into account the effect of unobservable factors correlated with attendance, such as ability, effort and motivation. We find that neither proxy variables nor instrumental variables provide a viable solution to the omitted variable bias. Panel estimators indicate that attendance has a positive and significant impact on performance. Lecture and classes have a similar effect on performance individually, although their impact cannot be identified separately. Overall, the results indicate that, after controlling for unobservable student characteristics, teaching has an important independent effect on learning.JEL Classification: A22, I21.

This paper argues that television viewing produces higher material aspirations, by enhancing both adaptation and positional effects, thus lowering the effect of income on life satisfaction. Using individual data from the World Values Survey we present evidence indicating that the effect of income on both life and financial satisfaction is significantly smaller for heavy television viewers, relative to occasional viewers. This finding is robust to a number of specification checks and alternative interpretations. Overall, the results can be interpreted as providing an additional explanation for the income-happiness paradox: the pervasive and increasing role of television viewing in people's life, by raising material aspirations, reduces the effect of income on individual happiness. JEL Classification: A12, D12, I31 Keywords: subjective well-being, TV consumption, aspiration level. * University of Milan-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano, Italy. Telephone: #39 2 6448 6588. E-mail: luigino.bruni@unimib.it † Corresponding author. University of Milan-Bicocca. Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milano, Italy. Telephone: #39 2 6448 6655. E-mail: luca.stanca@unimib.it "It is hard for us to realize how little of our information comes from direct experience with the physical environment, and how much of it comes only indirectly, from other people and the mass media."