Happiness (or subjective well-being) in the spotlight
Macroeconomists are in the dog-house but behavioural and welfare economists are in the acsendancy as policy focuses on ways in which we can nudge people to healthier lifestyles and away from an age of excess. A new survey finds that people seem to get happier as they age. And Tim Harford writes about the growing emphasis being given to aspects of welfare economics in today’s Sunday Times
“Silly or sobering, happiness economics is in the ascendancy. The economists conducting this research have influence in high places. Lord Layard, the patron saint of happiness economics in the UK, is a Labour life peer. Alan Krueger, an economist who has been working with Kahneman and Schwarz, has been made a senior Treasury official by President Obama. Before his nomination he was working on a method for producing “happiness accounts” for the United States.”
Don’t forget to pack Tim’s new book for the beach ..... it is a super read
Tim Harford on behavioural studies
Tim Harford was on great form yesterday at our London conference drawing on some themes in his new book The Logic of Life. Bizarrely I was the only one in the audience prepared to admit that that I have been on a speed date, but no matter, Tim gave me some great advice on who I should take with me to dramatically improve my chances next time around! Here in Slate Magazine, Tim mentions some of the work of Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational) and Richard Thaler (Nudge). I am hoping to finish Nudge whilst walking in the Northumberland hills over the next couple of days.
Here is another interesting feature on the economics of happiness
Hedonic Man by Alan Wolfe (New republic) and a review of Dan Ariely
The new economics and the pursuit of happiness
Two weeks to the RES deadline!
There are two weeks until the final deadline for submitting essays for the 2008 RES competition. Here at school we had our own internal competition to give students a chance to win a small prize for an early entry. I thought I would give a flavour of the topics covered
Open source software
Feed-in-Tariffs
Economics of mass collaboration
Micro-finance
Lump sum taxes
Free trade
Carbon trading
Globalization
Welfare and happiness policies
Flat rate taxes
Auctions
There were certainly some interesting essays from the two dozen that I read - it is so much fun reading an essay without having to give it a mark or apply some dodgy assessment criteria to it. Hopefully my students will find a bit of time away from revision to do a little more reading for their essays and work on their style and arguments before the 12th May deadline arrives!
More to life than GDP?
Happiness economics is a topic very much in vogue at the moment, and this year’s edition of Social Trends has clearly paid homage to that fact by including a measure of subjective well-being: Satisfaction with standard of living and financial prospects [Table 5.5]. The data made no attempt to debunk the Easterlin paradox: while household income has increased by over 60% and household wealth has more than doubled, satisfaction with standard of living has remained constant at around 85%.
Bhutan and Gross National Happiness
Is there a trade off between wealth and well-being? I missed this Newsnight report from Mark Easton which appeared on BBC2 last month - but came across it whilst revising my work schemes for our new courses next year. This is a terrific eight minute video on life in the absolute monarchy of Bhutan - a country without traffic lights and which has banned plastic bags and adverts for Pepsi and Coca Cola. The video clip is excellent perhaps as an introduction to discussion on living standards or even the basic economic problem.
Tim Harford’s essay on happiness which was published a couple of years ago is still well worth a read.
Robert Frank on Income and Happiness
One of my favourite authors, the ‘Economic Naturalist’, Robert Frank writes about real incomes and happiness in today’s New York Times. He makes the point that “findings suggest that relative income is a much better predictor of well-being than absolute income” and the article is excellent for students wanting to know a little more about the problems in adjusting for price changes in the economy when trying to capture real improvements in living standards.
“Since the mid-1970s, however, income growth has been confined almost entirely to top earners. Changes in per-capita G.D.P., which track only changes in average income, are completely silent about the effects of this shift. A society that aspires to improve needs a better measure of what counts as progress.”
See: Income and Happiness: An Imperfect Link
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