Scholarships vs. training for happiness gained from education in creativity: an analytical model

F. Zagonari

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: This paper presents an analytical model of the dynamic interrelationships between education, creativity, and happiness based on both theoretical insights and recent empirical neurological studies. In the model, the outcome is conditional on individual intelligence and risk aversion. Specifically, it focuses on two main determinants of creativity (divergent and convergent thinking), and compares two main educational policies (scholarships vs. training) in terms of their impacts on the happiness gained from creativity in the general and healthy population. An empirical test is provided by matching the model s predictions with the results of recent neuroscience research. Numerical simulations suggested that improving convergent thinking is more important than improving divergent thinking for creativity to generate happiness throughout an individual s life, provided both divergent and convergent thinking have achieved a sufficiently large degree; and that unstructured training in divergent thinking (e.g., in accounting schools) is necessary to reach richer but less intelligent people, whereas scholarships or unstructured training in convergent thinking (e.g., in art schools) are necessary to reach more intelligent but less rich people.

JEL-codes: I1 I3 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-hap
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/4225/1/WP999.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp999

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().