Better Government Better Life Research Assignment Paper

Better Government Better Life

Yuelin Shi
ECON4850
April 19, 2017

Abstract
This Paper aims at figuring out the relationship between better government and individuals’ levels of good living and happiness. The paper is also aimed at finding how peoples’ lives and happiness can be improved through making better the way the government operates.
The individual happiness evaluation result in 2014 carried on 141 different countries can be used to figure out these countries’ mean value of individual happiness level in current situation. In this paper, I will take government performance in 2014 as an observation.
For government performance, I selected four regressors (by references mentioned in the introduction part): Government Effectiveness, Control of Corruption, Voice and Accountability, and GDP per capita adjusted by PPP (purchase power parity).
Introduction
The paper looks at how individuals’ life pleasure in a country relate to the performance of the government of that economy. This was done by investigating the impact of the value of the government on satisfaction of life in a country. We can find out a way to improve the quality of people’s life by changing or improving government public policies. This is possible if people can get a highly effective government, where their voices are heard and the state is accountable and citizens get a better income, and then their happiness levels can be improved. Changing an individual’s life status is not that easy and calls for an individual’s decision to be self-dependent, however, public policies are more effective to the whole country. The variables used to measure the performance of government are government’s voice, effectiveness, corruption rates, accountability and the GDP of the economy.
A survey to find out what determines satisfaction in life was carried out in the year 2008 by a number of researchers. They observed 90000 features in 70 nations observing the politics, economics, institutions and human development and culture (Bjørnskov, Dreher & Fischer, 2008). The ordered probit method was used to check whether these variables affect satisfaction in life. Robust was also done on the findings using extreme bound analysis method. They claim government effectiveness in micro-econ are more effective to macro-econ. From the conclusion it was noticed that minor factors like openness, business climate, total chambers in government, dominance of Christian and infant mortality have an effect on satisfaction in life (Bjørnskov, Dreher & Fischer, 2008).
Whiteley et al found out the relationship between public policies and satisfaction in life. A survey was done to see if the macro economic variables or government policies affect the microeconomic variables in a country (Whiteley, Clarke, Sanders & Stewart, 2010). Political events and economic changes and how the government managed to tackle them were some of the major variables used to measure government policies. After a linear regression analysis it clearly showed that the policy outcomes determine the performance of the state and in reality the policies formulated affect the satisfaction of life of the individuals in an economy. E...