Happiness

Happiness by Bruno S Frey

A leading economist discusses the potential of happiness research (the quantification of well-being) to answer important questions that standard economics methods are unable to analyze.

Revolutionary developments in economics are rare. The conservative bias of the field and its enshrined knowledge make it difficult to introduce new ideas not in line with received theory. Happiness research, however, has the potential to change economics substantially in the future. Its findings, which are gradually being taken into account in standard economics, can be considered revolutionary in three respects: the measurement of experienced utility using psychologists' tools for measuring subjective well-being; new insights into how human beings value goods and services and social conditions that include consideration of such non-material values as autonomy and social relations; and policy consequences of these new insights that suggest different ways for government to affect individual well-being. In Happiness, emphasizing empirical evidence rather than theoretical conjectures, Bruno Frey substantiates these three revolutionary claims for happiness research. After tracing the major developments of happiness research in economics and demonstrating that we have gained important new insights into how income, unemployment, inflation, and income demonstration affect well-being, Frey examines such wide-ranging topics as democracy and federalism, self-employment and volunteer work, marriage, terrorism, and watching television from the new perspective of happiness research. Turning to policy implications, Frey describes how government can provide the conditions for people to achieve well-being, arguing that a crucial role is played by adequate political institutions and decentralized decision making. Happiness demonstrates the achievements of the economic happiness revolution and points the way to future research.

Bruno S. Frey is a Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Research Director at CREMA - Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland. Before that he was a Professor at the Universities of Konstanz, Zurich, Chicago, Warwick and Friedrichshafen. He has been awarded five Honorary Doctorates in five countries. Frey has published 23 books and more than 600 articles in scholarly journals.

Christoph A. Schaltegger has been a Professor of Political Economics at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland, since 2010 and dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management since 2016. He also teaches public finance at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he serves as a director of the Institute of Public Finance and Fiscal Law (IFF). In spring 2009 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.