Economics and Happiness Framing the Analysis

This book is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive overview of happiness in Economics. Although it is comparatively unusual to put happiness and economics together, the association appears increasingly exciting and fruitful. A number of studies have been produced following RichardEasterlins and Tibor Scitovskys pioneering works throughout the 1970s. The essays collected in this book provide an authoritative and comprehensive assessment both theoretical, applied and partly experimental of the whole field moving from the so-called paradoxes of happiness in Economics.The book breaks new ground, particularly on the more recent directions of research on happiness, well-being, interpersonal relations and reciprocity. The meaning of happiness is thoroughly explored and the tension between a hedonic-subjective idea of happiness and a eudaimonic-objective one isdiscussed. This volume opens with Richard Easterlins own assessment of the main issues. Other authors include Robert H. Frank, Robert Sugden, Bruno S. Frey, Alois Stutzer, Richard Layard, Martha C. Nussbaum, Matt Matravers, Bernard M.S, van Praag, Oded Stark, You Q. Wang, Ruut Veenhoven, Charlotte Phelps,Stefano Zamagni, and Luigi Pasinetti.

Luigino Bruni is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of East Anglia and the University of Florence. His main interests are in the field of ethics in economics, the history of economic thought, and the methodology of economics, sociality, and happiness in economics.
Pier Luigi Porta is Chair at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He has been a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, Universite de Fribourg, Duke University, New York University, and the University of Bologna. He is also Secretary of ESHET, the European Society for the History of Economic Thought.