By Tom Green / Source: Adbusters
In the last few years, a growing number of economists have been discovering happiness.
It's not that they are spending more time admiring flowers, helping old folks cross the road, dancing on the street or baking pies for neighbors. In fact, these happiness economists are working long hours in soul-numbing ways, torturing data with their latest econometric techniques to force deeply buried facts to the surface.
What is different is that these economists are revisiting old assumptions and asking new questions. They're not taking the neoclassical model of rational economic man for truth. They have been willing to learn from their colleagues in psychology. They have given up on the old assumption that the more you consume, the better off you are; instead, they are actually looking at the question empirically.
What is different is that these economists are revisiting old assumptions and asking new questions. They're not taking the neoclassical model of rational economic man for truth. They have been willing to learn from their colleagues in psychology. They have given up on the old assumption that the more you consume, the better off you are; instead, they are actually looking at the question empirically.
Most importantly, they are bravely asking, "What factors make people happy?" It's another sign of the coming revolution in economics.
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