This paper empirically investigates the impact of relational goods on individual life satisfaction. By relational goods we indicate the affective/expressive, non instrumental, side of interpersonal relationships. The homo oeconomicus view of human nature is questioned by the recent upsurge of empirical studies on the determinants of self declared happiness, that show that an increasing income does not always lead to more subjective well being ( Easterlin's famous (1974) 'paradox of happiness'). The theoretical literature on relational goods has isolated various mechanisms which may induce an under-consumption and under- production of relational goods. The hypothesis we test is that people with a more intense relational life are less affected by this 'relational poverty trap' and are therefore happier. Our findings does not disprove our hypothesis: relational goods turn out to have significant and positive effects on self declared life satisfaction, when other determinants isolated in the literature as important are taken into account and when the inverse causality nexus i.e. from more happiness to a more intense relational life is also taken into account. Finally, we show that gender, age and education matter and in particular that the effects of sociability on happiness are stronger for women, older and less educated individuals. These findings can be useful in designing and evaluating public policies with a direct or indirect effect on the quality and quantity of relational goods. Copyright 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

We study the relationship between output growth and output variability in a simple stochastic monetary growth model with nominal rigidities and learning-by-doing. We show that this relationship may be positive or negative depending on the impulse source of fluctuations. D

This paper presents an analysis of the joint determination of growth and business cycles with the view to studying the long-run implications of short-term monetary stabilization policy. The analysis is based on a simple stochastic growth model in which both real and nominal shocks have permanent effects on output due to nominal rigidities (wage contracts) and an endogenous technology (learning-by-doing). It is shown that there is a negative correlation between the mean and variance of output growth irrespective of the source of fluctuations. It is also shown that, in spite of this, there may exist a conflict between short-term stabilization and long-term growth depending on the type of disturbance. Finally, it is shown that, from a welfare perspective, the optimal monetary policy is that policy which maximizes long-run growth to the exclusion of stabilization considerations.

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The recent availability of cross-sectional and longitudinal survey data\ud on life satisfaction in a large number of countries gives us the opportunity to verify\ud empirically (and not just to assume) what matters for individuals and what economists\ud and policymakers should take into account when trying to promote personal\ud and societal well-being. We now have ample evidence, generally robust to different\ud cultural backgrounds, on the effects of some important happiness drivers (income,\ud health, unemployment, marital status, etc.) which can be considered ‘‘quasi-stylized\ud facts’’ of happiness. If economic policies, for many obvious reasons, cannot maximize\ud self-declared life satisfaction as such, we are nonetheless learning a lot from\ud these findings. In particular, results on the relevance of relational goods, on the\ud inflation/unemployment trade-off in terms of welfare and, more in general, on the\ud measurement of the shadow value of non-market goods obtained with life satisfaction\ud estimates are conveying relevant information about individual preferences\ud and what is behind utility functions. Such findings suggest that the anthropological\ud reductionism characterizing most economic models can be misleading and that\ud target indicators of economic policies have to be refocused if we want to minimize\ud the distance between economic development and human progress