Customer Reviews

Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being.

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This is a book of excellent insight and originality that will be accessible primarily to scholars. Authors and economists Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer explore the uncharted terrain of happiness. They teach that happiness is fundamental to economics, although economists disagree about what happiness is and how to measure it. The authors emphasize the importance of intangible, subjective factors in happiness, and bring a good deal of psychological research into the discussion of how economic circumstances affect happiness. They offer surprising evidence and conclusions, such as the facts that the old and the young are almost equally happy, and that a rising income ceases to increase happiness after clearing a relatively low hurdle. We recommend this book to the advanced specialists on economics and psychology for whom it was written, with the caveat that its dry academic style will not bring happiness to the intrigued but nonexpert reader.

Anti globalists, the serious ones, aim for a happier world. Classical economists see no place for happiness in economics. Both will improve the quality of their thinking by reading this book. It provides in just 200 pages an excellent overview of concepts in economics and their consequences on motivation and happiness, supported by statistical evidence. The presentation of the evidence can be improved by using more tables and less graphs, or graphs with the corresponding tables in an appendix. Even though references are given with the graphs it is impossible to find the original data in the Internet. It is also of interest to policy makers in business and government. For governments some well-founded recommendations are made concerning participation of the electorate, referenda, and decentralisation. For business the ideas about the link between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are useful concepts.

This book is essential to anyone that wishes to comprehend happiness as a scientific subject. Frey and Stutzer give a excelent panoramic view about the hedonic science ans subjective well-being research.