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The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and revealed a link between happiness and obesity. Despite the importance of this link, few studies have analyzed this relationship. Moreover, it may be the case that the relationship between happiness and obesity is nonlinear. The relationship between happiness and income, however, has been studied by several researchers, particularly after the publication of Easterlin (1974). In his famous paradox, Easterlin found that after reaching a certain level, the further increase of material wealth no longer promotes happiness. Here, we investigate whether there is a quadratic relationship between happiness & obesity and happiness & income, for a panel of EU countries for the period 2005- 2016, using the system GMM method. The empirical results suggest an inverse U-shaped relationship between happiness & obesity and happiness & income, implying that as obesity (income), represented by body mass index, increases, happiness first increases then stabilizes and finally decreases. Hence, the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between happiness and income supports the validity of the Kuznets curve hypothesis. Some control variables were also included in the regressions in order to solve omitted variable bias problems. The results indicate that income inequality and unemployment have a significantly negative impact on happiness.

This paper investigates the link between stock performance of the listed commercial banks in the Turkish stock exchange and three measures of bank performance, such as technical efficiency, scale efficiency and productivity for the period 1998-2008. The relationship between efficiency and stock returns is investigated by running a regression of stock returns on measures of performance and some bank specific variables. The results indicate that the changes in three measures of performance have positive and significant effect on stock returns, suggesting that stocks of technical efficient, scale efficient and productive banks tend to outperform their inefficient and unproductive rivals.

This paper investigates whether homicide rates among the European Union (EU) member countries tend to converge over the period 1990 to 2018. We use the concept of β-convergence proposed by Barro and Sala-i-Martin (1992) and employ the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, hereafter) methodology for 2-years span panel data of 26 EU member countries. The results provide strong evidence for both absolute and conditional convergence of homicide rates across EU countries. Moreover, speed of homicide convergence is increased by the control variables, namely GDP per capita and unemployment rate. Hence, we conclude that the economic integration contributes to the process of convergence in homicide rates in the EU. JEL classification: O47; C23; K42 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study considering the period 1995-2002 and 11 banking firms belonging to Central and Eastern European countries, and examining the effects of technical change on these firms, is presented.

This paper examines the impact of competition and concentration on stability in the Turkish insurance sector over the period 2002–2014. The main results indicate that non–life insurers are more stable in a less competitive and highly concentrated environment. This finding provides support for the competition–fragility view in the Turkish non–life insurance sector. In contrast, life/pension insurers are more stable in a highly competitive and more concentrated market. Hence, our findings provide support for the competition–stability view for Turkish life/pension insurers. The results further indicate that higher market power decreases (increases) earnings volatility in the non–life (life/pension) insurance sector. A quadratic term of the competition measures was also used in this study to capture a possible nonlinear relationship between competition and risk. The results suggest an inverse U-shaped pattern for the non–life insurer's case. That is, market power increases insurer stability until a threshold level. As for the life/pension insurer's case, the results also support a U-shaped relationship between market power and stability. The results further show that there is no nonlinear relationship between competition and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]