Moderation, contentment, work, and alms—A Buddhist household theory

Harald Wiese

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2011, vol. 40, issue 6, 909-918

Abstract: The paper deals with household theory from the angle of Buddhist thought. We build on the Buddhist terms of tanha versus chanda to express Buddhist preferences and Buddhist household theory in terms of textbook microeconomic terms. We find that preferences of Buddhist (enlightened) people may differ from those of non-Buddhist people in a systematic manner. Among other hypotheses, we deduce that Buddhists work harder than non-Buddhists if we control for meditation time. We argue that any full-grown Buddhist economics (if it is to exist) needs to build on Buddhist preference and household theory, either as presented here or in a different form.

Keywords: Buddhism; Tanha; Chanda; Moderation; Happiness research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053535711001041
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:soceco:v:40:y:2011:i:6:p:909-918

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2011.08.016

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().