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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.

AbstractThis paper undertakes an up‐to‐date assessment of evolution and convergence in market power over 2013 and 2018 in the Eurozone banking markets in view of the progress towards completing the banking union. The results show that average market power measured by the Lerner index displays an upward trend up until 2016 declining thereafter. Further findings by employing the panel convergence methodology of Philips and Sul (2007) fail to support the hypothesis of integration in the Eurozone banking markets through market power convergence. Furthermore, club clustering tests reveal presence of three sub‐clusters of countries with different speeds of convergence.

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 examines whether there has been convergence of total factor productivity levels across twenty-two EU member and three candidate countries following the process of legislative harmonization. The results indicate evidence of β-convergence and σ-convergence in productivity across sampled countries. The results further indicate that all sampled banking sectors seem to have experienced a significant productivity growth over the sample period. The productivity growth levels range from 3.1% to 15.6% and 6.8% to 19.5% in the old member and new member states, respectively. The geometric means considering all banking firms in the new member and candidate countries together reveal that banking sectors in these countries were more productive than those of in the old EU member countries. Overall, the evidence indicates that promoting merger and acquisition activities in the banking system (and hence supporting market driven consolidation of smaller banks) and enhancing the presence of foreign banks could increase competition and productivity in these banking systems.