RES Essay Competition - Happiness Economics
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Question 5 of the RES Essay Competition for 2011 asks “Should governments go for growth or for happiness?”
This is another question that chimes with an issue high on the economic policy agenda - namely the debate over whether well-being should be given a great priority in the design of micro and macro policies and the extent to which there is a trade-off between economic growth and different measures of happiness or welfare?
Suggestions for extension reading
The Economics of Happiness (Film)
Happiness economics - David Blanchflower (2008)
Is the concept of “wellbeing” useful for policy-making? (Paul Ormerod, 2008) - see also Paul Ormerod - Happiness, Economics and Public Policy
The Happiness Movement (Richard Layard)
The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century (The Ecologist Magazine)
New Economics Foundation (NEF) - see also Measuring our Progress, the power of well-being (Feb 2011) and other publications on happiness
Guardian: It’s time to give up our blind faith in economic growth (2009)
Why Are Some Cities Happier Than Others? (Richard Florida, March 2011)
Links to economists researching happiness economics and growth
Richard Easterlin
Richard Layard
Andrew Oswald
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Is happiness the right measure of social progress? [20 Oct 2011]
Unit 1 Micro: Sleep, Money, Happiness and Choices! [25 Sep 2011]
Happiness and Prosperity and the Equation that Links the Two [23 Jan 2011]
Economics at the Movies - Four Yorkshiremen and Happiness Economics [31 Oct 2010]
The Happy Planet Index [30 Aug 2010]
Finding new opportunities among the economic wreckage [1 Jun 2010]
Happiness (or subjective well-being) in the spotlight [9 Aug 2009]
Q&A: What is the Easterlin Paradox? [1 Apr 2009]
Tim Harford on behavioural studies [28 Jun 2008]
Two weeks to the RES deadline! [28 Apr 2008]
More to life than GDP? [8 Apr 2008]
Bhutan and Gross National Happiness [26 Mar 2008]
Robert Frank on Income and Happiness [9 Mar 2008]
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