An assessment of methods in "Assessing the impact of the size and scope of government on human well-being."

This thesis applies statistical methods used by economists to a recent paper in the political science literature. As a basis for suggesting more robust methods to be employed in future research, I will replicate and extend the analysis of Assessing the Impact of the Size and Scope of Government on Human Well-Being, which tests the impact of four measures of government intervention on citizen life satisfaction (Flavin et al, 2014). Despite my suggested method changes, my results do not differ substantially from those in Size of Government on Well-Being in sign and significance, with the exception that I no longer find a relationship between welfare spending and satisfaction. I conclude that further research should be done on the effect of more specific government policies on satisfaction, with the use of the more robust methods described in this paper.