Happiness Research: State and Prospects

Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer

No 190, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: This paper intends to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and in which interesting directions it might develop. First, the current state of the research on happiness in economics is briefly discussed. We emphasize the potential of happiness research in testing competing theories of individual behavior. Second, the crucial issue of causality is taken up illustrating it for a particular case, namely whether marriage makes people happy or whether happy people get married. Third, happiness research is taken up as a new approach to measuring utility in the context of cost-benefit analysis.

Keywords: causality; cost-benefit analysis; happiness research; life satisfaction approach; marriage; selection; subjective well-being; terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 H41 I31 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-evo, nep-hpe and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (105)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52086/1/iewwp190.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Happiness Research: State and Prospects (2005)
Working Paper: Happiness Research: State and Prospects (2004)
Working Paper: Happiness Research: State and Prospects
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:zur:iewwpx:190

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().