The Economics of Happiness

If you don't like The Economist, wait a week. After the ill-tempered comments of the last post, the latest issue offers this excellent article on happiness and economics.  This is a great piece, offering plenty of historical context, going back to Carlyle and Hume, and giving critical attention to many different points of view.  I was especially happy to see acknowledgement of the contributions of Kahneman, who introduced the radical concept of asking people if they were happy.  And I had not been familiar with the work of Layard (if his new book seems a bit daunting, this article looks like an easier way to get started).

On a somewhat related note, I have been meaning to point out a series of good postings by Macroblog on economists and their critics (here, here, and here).  It is worth looking at these to get a sense of how it feels from the economists' side of of things.