@techreport{Frijters2008Happiness, abstract = {This paper
addresses the question of when and to what extent individuals
are affected by major positive and negative life events,
including changes in financial situation, marital status, death
of child or spouse and being a victim of crime. The key
advantage of our data is that we are able to identify these
events on a quarterly basis rather than on the yearly basis used
by previous studies. We find evidence that life events are not
randomly distributed, that individuals to a large extent
anticipate major events and that they quickly adapt. These
effects have important implications for the calculation of
monetary values needed to compensate individuals for life events
such as crime or death of spouse. We find that our new valuation
methodology that incorporates these dynamic factors produces
considerably smaller compensation valuations than those
calculated using the standard approach.}, address = {Bonn},
author = {Paul Frijters and David W. Johnston and Michael