Support for bigger government: The principle-implementation gap and COVID-19.

We study the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on government and market attitudes using within-subject comparisons of survey responses elicited before and after the onset of the pandemic. We find that participants develop significantly less favorable opinions toward government and markets; and that participants increase support for bigger government significantly and for redistribution, in general, marginally significantly. There is no evidence this leads to an increase in support for specific redistributive policies, nor for government to play a larger role in specific functions.

Local neighbors as positives, regional neighbors as negatives: Competing channels in the relationship between others' income, health, and happiness.

That well-being is decreasing in others' income is termed the "relative income hypothesis" (RIH) by scholars of subjective well-being (SWB) and has substantial empirical support. Some studies, however, present evidence of both positive and negative explanatory channels in the relationship between others' income and SWB. We develop a theoretical framework integrating four distinct channels through which neighbors' income can affect utility: public goods, cost of living, expectations of future income, and direct effects (RIH or altruism).