44 – Sociability and Happiness

Abstract
The standard specification of utility functions in economic models usually neglects the effect of sociability on happiness.

Our level and first difference panel estimates show that relational goods have significant and positive effects on self declared life satisfaction, net of the impact of standard controls included in these kinds of estimates.

The estimation of a panel GMM VAR system shows that such effects remain significant when the inverse causality nexus is taken into account.

Man is a knot into which relationships are tied, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942.

Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow, Swedish Proverb.

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings, Miles Franklin.