Economists are mainly interested in trust as being growth enhancing, but whether trust is well-being enhancing is underexplored. This paper examines if trust is intrinsically valuable by using individual happiness data from Japan. I attempt to mitigate the problem of non-random selection of residents by restricting the sample to non-movers. I also address reverse causality by instrumenting trust with residential stability, as trust should be higher for a more stable community. I find that trust has positive and significant effects on individual happiness. The instrumental variables approach suggests that social trust has a causal effect on individual happiness.j ere_533 444..459 JEL Classification Number: I31.

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Many economists share the view that the rise in obesity is largely the result of rational decision-making by individuals who compare risks and benefits. A dominant view among economists is that there is no economic justification for government intervention unless there is a market failure. However, recent developments in behavioral economics suggests that people often fail to make optimal decisions, and that public welfare may be improved by government interventions even when there is no externality. This paper examines the association between one's body weight and life satisfaction by utilizing data on self-reported life satisfaction, which approximates individual utility, after briefly reviewing the economics of obesity and discussing the rationale and justification of obesity-related policies. Using a large data set (N = 1,465,219), it is found that life satisfaction of people who are overweight or obese is lower. The adverse life satisfaction effect of obesity remains statistically significant, even when socioeconomic factors and obesity-related health variables are controlled. The findings suggest that many overweight and obese people may be making sub-optimal decisions when it comes to eating. While the findings are not causal and thus do not necessarily suggest that government intervention will be welfareenhancing even in the absence of negative externalities, effective anti-obesity policies may lead to higher life satisfaction among many overweight people who are struggling with self-control problems.

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This study investigates whether the expansion of temporary employment in Japan has caused an increased perception of job insecurity among workers there. Non-regular employment, such as part-time and temporary work, has increased as a proportion of the Japanese workforce in recent years. The deregulation of temporary staffing in 2004 allowed firms to use temporary agency staffing for production line work in manufacturing. Using this legislation as a turning point and analyzing data from the Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS), which contains a question eliciting workers' beliefs about their own job insecurity, the author uses a difference-in-differences (DD) methodology to find that the expansion of temporary employment contributes significantly to a rise in perceived job insecurity among workers.I n most developed economies, non-regular employment, such as part-time and temporary work, has increased as a proportion of the workforce in recent years. The trend seems to be more prevalent in countries such as France, Italy, and Spain, where regular employees have strong job protection, which in turn encourages firms to hire more non-regular workers who can easily be terminated when a reduction of labor is necessary (Booth et al. 2002). Japan, which also has strong employment protection for regular workers, has witnessed a similar dynamic. Because of the stagnant economy, and in response to competitive pressures, Japanese firms have increasingly taken on non-regular employees as a means to lower labor costs and to gain flexibility in hiring and dismissal. 1 One notable phenomenon in the recent