What contribution I would like to make to the literature

Last week I discussed the history of happiness research, especially since the Easterlin Paradox in economics in the mid-1970s and the advent of Hedonic Psychology in the 1990s. In the past I’ve presented the model that I’m going to be building. This week, on Bruce’s suggestion, I’m going to talk about how my model fits into the literature. That is to say, I’m going to explain what contribution I would like to make.

History of the economics of happiness

This week I’m going to talk about the history of happiness as a concept in public policy. As I’m doing a PhD in economics this will be mostly about economic attitudes to happiness, but as this is a public policy school I will discuss the concept more generally as well.

PhD Presentation: The Model

This was a presentation I gave recently to my PhD cohort, rehashing some things I have posted here previously. 

Let’s just start with the model. It looks like the following:

UTILITYi = log(WELLBEINGi) + HAPPINESSti + MEANINGi