Happiness and Pareto

George Irvin ()

ICER Working Papers from ICER - International Centre for Economic Research

Abstract: While the utilitarian notion of ‘happiness’ is unsatisfactory, widespread interest in the subject suggests that economists are recognising the importance of relative income status, particularly in the US and the UK where income inequality has increased greatly . If relative income matters, one must reconsider the notion of a Pareto improvement, which is basic to public policy decisions. By the same token, distributional issues are central to any discussion about the costs and benefits of growth, an issue suggested not merely by the ‘happiness’ literature but by much recent writing on social capital, co-operative surviv al strategies the like. Nor is there a simple trade-off between efficiency and equity, since the two may be complementary. The neo-classical theory of factor rewards cannot justify current inequality since, upon closer examination, it is tautological and incoherent. The conclusion is that economists would do better to seek guidance on distributional matters from Rawlsian-type political theory.

Date: 2007-03
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