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The Role of Social Capital in Explaining the Happiness-Income Relation
Get PDFThe dissertation analyses the role of social capital in explaining the happiness-income relation. It consist of three chapters:
- Survey chapter explaining why happiness and social capital are actually a part of economic science;
- Research chapter on eliminating the negative effects of income comparisons on well-being (the role of social capital);
- Research chapter on the importance of income and social capital for well-being during economic shocks (the case of financial crisis in Europe).
Chapter 1.
Since the Easterlin's 1974 article economists have been expressing more and more interest in defining the sources of happiness. Their main task for over 40 years now has been to identify economic and non-economic sources of well-being in order to define polices aimed at maximizing happiness in nations. However, they have not precisely explained why the so-called ``happiness economics'' is actually a part of economic science. This chapter surveys the latest findings of the well-being literature to show that happiness is an economic concept. Firstly, happiness is a determinant of economic outcomes: it increases productivity and one's future income, as well as the probability of finding re-employment. Secondly, happiness data has been used to: value the intangibles (non-market goods such as air and clean water), derive the marginal rates of substitution, and to understand habits and preference formation. The second part of this chapter reviews the literature on social capital, showing that it is not only a component of human happiness, but it also plays a significant role in explaining economic outcomes. Finally yet importantly, numerous national and international research initiatives demonstrate that happiness and social capital are important components of quality of life and they should be considered in the process of implementing the well-being policies.
Chapter 2.
Are unhappiness, high concern for money and scarcity of social capital different faces of the same phenomenon? Economists tend to treat these variables as distinct correlates of well-being. On the contrary, positive psychologists argue that they all relate to materialism, a system of personal values ascribing great importance in life to extrinsic motivations and low priority to intrinsic motivations. Using data from two European cross-sectional surveys and the German Socio-Economic Panel, I test the hypothesis that material interests, proxied by the effects of individual and reference income on well-being, are associated with low levels of social capital. The results suggest that people with scarce social capital tend to have greater material interests, whereas the negative effect of income comparisons on well-being is eliminated for individuals exhibiting the highest levels of social capital. The implication of such finding is that promoting social capital reduces people's material concerns and has positive impact on their well-being. The results from a country-level analysis additionally show that, since social capital moderates the importance of income for well-being on individual level, the well-being gap between income groups is significantly smaller in countries with higher social capital.
Chapter 3.
I compare the role of income and social capital for well-being in times of economic crisis in Europe. I use European Social Survey data from 2006 to 2012 to test the following hypothesis: i. social capital predicts well-being also in times of crisis; ii. the importance of material concerns increases, but the importance of other determinants of well-being does not change. Regression analysis with interaction effects and the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition confirm the role of social capital for people's well-being thus supporting the view that also in times of crisis, when material concerns are urgent, policies for recovery should mind their effects for social capital
The Role of Income and Social Capital for Europeans’ Well-Being During the 2008 Economic Crisis
No full textWe investigate whether the correlation of income and social capital with well-being changes in times of economic crisis. Both subjective well-being and social capital may decline during a crisis, and their correlation can change: if social capital becomes a scarce good, it may correlate more with well-being. Alternatively, people may find that in times of crisis other things matter more for well-being and its association with social capital should decrease. To account for these possibilities, we apply a Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition and regression analysis with interaction effects to European Social Survey data from 2006 to 2012. Our findings indicate that, after accounting for the decline of social capital, its correlation with well-being does not change over time. On the contrary, income becomes only temporarily more important for well-being. We conclude that in times of crisis, when material concerns are urgent, policy makers targeting recovery should account for the policy impacts on social capital
Production of Space and Creative Destruction in the Photographic Work of Naoya Hatakeyama
No full textThe photographic work of Naoya Hatakeyama is an extensive visual example of how natural resources serve as a fuel of capitalist production. In his three major series – Lime Hills (1986- 91), Lime Works (1991-94), and Untitled (1989-2005) – Hatakeyama focuses on limestone to connect the world of natural landscape with the world of urban built structures. In Blast (1995- 2008), the destructive force of capitalism and its devastating influence on the environment become literal: natural material is being torn into pieces in order to build a city. From exploitation of limestone hills, through the manufacture of concrete, to the construction of skyscrapers in a late capitalist city – the photographs transform the process of annihilation of rural space into timeless evidence of the humankind’s domination over the natural environment. With his photographic bodies of work, Hatakeyama follows the idea of Henri Lefebvre (The Production of Space, 1974) showing how nature is reduced to means of urban space production. What is fundamental to capitalism’s destructive domination over the environment, is not only the possession of space, but also the ability to absorb, produce, and constantly transform it
Money, Social Capital and Materialism. Evidence from Happiness Data
Get PDFAre unhappiness, high concern for money and scarcity of social capital different faces of the same phenomenon? Economists tend to treat these variables as distinct correlates of well-being. On the contrary, positive psychologists argue that they all relate to materialism, a system of personal values ascribing great importance in life to extrinsic motivations and low priority to intrinsic motivations. Using data from two European cross-sectional surveys and the German Socio-Economic Panel, I test the hypothesis that material interests, proxied by the effects of individual and reference income on well-being, are associated with low levels of social capital. The results suggest that people with scarce social capital tend to have greater material interests, whereas the negative effect of income comparisons on well-being is eliminated for individuals exhibiting the highest levels of social capital. The implication of such finding is that promoting social capital reduces people's material concerns and has positive impact on their well-being. The results from a country-level analysis additionally show that, since social capital moderates the importance of income for well-being on individual level, the well-being gap between income groups is significantly smaller in countries with higher social capital
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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