Measuring individual welfare using data on reported subjective well-being has made great progress. It offers a new way of confronting public choice hypotheses with field
data, e.g. with respect to partisan preferences on unemployment and inflation or rents in the public bureaucracy. Insights from public choice also help to assess the role of happiness measures in public policy. We emphasize that maximizing aggregate happiness as a social
welfare function neglects incentive problems and political institutions while citizens are reduced to metric stations. The goal of happiness research should be to improve the nature of the processes through which individuals can express their preferences.
Which schools of thought are favored by German economists? What makes a good economist and which economists have been most influential? These questions were addressed in a survey, conducted in the summer of 2006 among the members of the 'Verein fr Socialpolitik'. An econometric analysis is used to identify to what extent ideological preferences or personal factors determine the respondents' answers. Our results suggest that German economists favor neoclassical economic theory as a school of thought and appreciate the contributions of their Anglo-Saxon colleagues much more than their fellow compatriots' contributions. Furthermore, a 'good' economist should have expertise in a certain field, as well as a broader knowledge of general economics. Some of the results can be compared to Colander (2008). The results indicate that graduate programs noted for their American style greatly influence a student's opinion as to what attributes a good economist must have.
In this paper, we address the issue of spurious correlation in the production of health in a systematic way. Spurious
correlation entails the risk of linking health status to medical (and nonmedical) inputs when no links exist. This note
first presents the bounds testing procedure as a method to detect and avoid spurious correlation. It then applies it to a
recent contribution by Lichtenberg (2004), which relates longevity in the United States to pharmaceutical innovation
and public health care expenditure. The results of the bounds testing procedure show longevity to be related to these
two factors. Therefore, the estimates reported by Lichtenberg (2004) cannot be said to be result of spurious
correlation, to the contrary, they very likely reflect an effective relationship, at least for the United States.
This survey intends to portray the two main approaches of economic research on religion. The first investigates the impact of religion on the economy. Religion and the internalized value system are found to influence economic attitudes output in a favorable way. The second approach is to explain religious behavior with economic models showing how an individual can derive utility from religion. Modern happiness research makes it possible to measure the impact of religion on subjective well-being empirically. The literature finds a positive correlation of religion and happiness, with a robust effect of churchgoing and protestant confession, while the results on internal religiosity are more ambiguous. In our analyses for Switzerland we are able to confirm these results and show that the effect of church going on happiness is quite sizeable.
Over the last decades, empirical research on subjective well-being in the social sciences has provided a major new stimulation of the discourse on individual happiness.
Recently this research has also been linked to economics where reported subjective wellbeing is often taken as a proxy measure for individual welfare. In our review, we intend to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and of three directions it might develop. First, it offers new ways for testing the basic assumptions of the economic approach and for going about a new understanding of utility. Second, it provides a
new possibility for the complementary testing of theories across fields in economics. Third, we inquire how the insights gained from the study of individual happiness in economics affect public policy.
Lin Ostrom’s work constitutes a great step forward in the analysis of social governance. Instead of focusing on the technical characteristics of goods she studies what types of institutions have emerged and how they affect individual motivation and behavior in public goods and commons situations. Her approach represents a careful analysis of institutions often emerging from below. Unorthodox impacts of institutions on individual motivation and behavior as well as the possible creation of new institutions must be taken into account. The constitution must ensure that the involved individuals can establish adequate institutions regardless of possible opposition by politicians and bureaucrats.
The object of our study is a better understanding of the difference between cultural value and economic value, and of the process through which a change in the cultural value of an item changes the economic valuation of that item.
Cette contribution analyse la dynamique relative de la valeur artistique ou culturelle et de la valeur économique des œuvres d’art, notamment la manière dont l’évolution de la valeur culturelle d’une œuvre influence ou non dans le temps sa valeur économique. Dans certains domaines, la valeur culturelle est relativement ignorée par les économistes parce qu’elle ne semble guère influencer les prix de vente correspondants. Mais de manière générale, il existe des raisons pour considérer que ces deux types de valeur évoluent de manière liée. Pour cela l’histoire économique de trois tableaux célèbres est examinée, ce qui montre le rôle important de l’évolution de la valeur culturelle pour expliquer celui de la valeur culturelle. La « Vierge des roses » de Raphaël montre comment l’augmentation de la valeur culturelle a ici entrainé l’augmentation de sa valeur économique. « L’homme au casque d’or » de Rembrandt témoigne de l’évolution inverse. Enfin, « Numéro 12, 1949 » de Jason Pollock illustre leur codétermination progressive. De tels exemples doivent être considérés comme une première analyse empirique d’un nouveau territoire scientifique.
To understand human behavior, it is important to know under what conditions people deviate from selfish rationality. This study explores the interaction of natural survival instincts and internalized social norms using data on the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. We show that time pressure appears to be crucial when explaining behavior under extreme conditions of life and death. Even though the two vessels and the composition of their passengers were quite similar, the behavior of the individuals on board was dramatically different. On the Lusitania, selfish behavior dominated (which corresponds to the classical homo economicus); on the Titanic, social norms and social status (class) dominated, which contradicts standard economics. This difference could be attributed to the fact that the Lusitania sank in 18 min, creating a situation in which the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic (2 h, 40 min), there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge. Maritime disasters are traditionally not analyzed in a comparative manner with advanced statistical (econometric) techniques using individual data of the passengers and crew. Knowing human behavior under extreme conditions provides insight into how widely human behavior can vary, depending on differing external conditions.
Posner`s (2010) analysis offers many exciting insights into the principal-agent problem, particularly with respect to the secret service. I argue that it would be useful to consider a broader model of human behaviour, which includes awards as extrinsic incentives beyond pay, as well as intrinsic motivation. A more comparative stance that goes beyond the United States would be a useful check of how general the results are. Scholars should not forget that while the US is the dominant economy today, there are 195 nations in the world that offer many fascinating institutional variations, which are useful to take into account.
