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The paper uses household economic panel data from five countries—Australia, Britain, Germany, Hungary and The Netherlands—to provide a reassessment of the impact of economic well-being on happiness. The main conclusion is that happiness is considerably more affected by economic circumstances than previously believed. In all five countries wealth affects life satisfaction more than income. In the countries for which consumption data are available (Britain and Hungary), non-durable consumption expenditures also prove at least as important to happiness as income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The omission of pension wealth potentially distorts the international comparison of wealth distributions. Private pension wealth is often included in households' wealth portfolios, while public pension claims are not. Augmented wealth, the sum of net worth and pension wealth, resolves this limitation by including the present value of social security pension wealth. This article provides a detailed analysis of augmented wealth in Australia between 2002 and 2018, capturing the establishment of the compulsory private pension scheme, Superannuation, which was introduced in 1992. Augmented wealth is slightly less equally distributed in Australia than in Germany or Switzerland but more equal than in the United States. The article also explores the relationship between Superannuation dissaving rates and the means-tested public pension scheme, Age Pension, and its distributional implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We attempt to understand the personal incentives that motivate corporate insiders to engage in unethical behavior such as delayed trade disclosure. Delayed disclosure affects corporate transparency and other shareholders in the firm potentially suffer investment losses because they are unaware of insiders' activities. Using archival data from the 300 largest Australian firms between 2007 and 2011, the results show that risk factors such as insider age and tenure and wealth effects in the form of insider shareholdings affect the likelihood of delayed reporting. Governance positions such as committee membership mitigate this behavior. Our study highlights the importance of considering individual insider's wealth and risk factors. The self-monitoring role of governance positions is also indicative of the effectiveness of internal corporate governance in the prevention of illegal insider behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]