Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the happiest of them all?

I’m researching on my essay and I just read this paper by my lecturer and his other colleagues. The conclusion is interesting! It says to encourage everyone to live happily ever after. There are more interesting papers out there. His other papers are good too! I shall do a summary after I read most of them.

Have a look at http://ideas.repec.org for most papers.

So here is 1 of the papers that I find interesting (I only took out the conclusion part):

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the happiest of them all?

Conclusion

We started with the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tale, Little Snow-White, and morphed it into a modern academic context. Thus, we dispensed with the nasty and wicked Queen, the mirror and its monopolistic position, the monarchy and the beauty contest and replaced it with gentle researchers that reached stardom in economics as Nobel Prize winners, top economists or top happiness researchers. Using their preferred photographs from their academic environment we questioned in a democratic manner how individuals over the ocean, far away in the land Down Under perceive these researchers’ levels of happiness.

This transformation has lead to interesting results. We observe strong differences between the researchers. At the top of the happiness ranking we find a Nobel Prize winner and at the bottom, a happiness researcher. However, this is not the end of story; in the multivariate analysis happiness researchers record the highest level of perceived life satisfaction. Moreover, we find that macro-economists are perceived to be happier than the micro-economists. Thus, the advice for young academics is: if you seek happiness, become a macro-economist and research happiness; a Nobel Prize does not make you happier; if you want to be popular with the ladies, take lessons from Edmund Phelps, Bruno Frey and Richard Easterlin; if you are looking for the ability to age like a red wine, Joseph Stiglitz and Jean Tirole have the trick, but not Richard Easterlin; surround yourself with happy people, as they will think you are happier on average, and with women as they will judge you to be happier; and be careful how much information you reveal about yourself, as this may affect you in a positive or negative manner.

The happiness literature has strongly focused on self-reported happiness. The use of perceptions is common in economics, especially in areas where direct measurements are limited (e.g. corruption, tax evasion). Moreover, such an approach may help to deal with the problems of validity and reliability, both key evaluation criteria when using indicators of happiness. Finally, keep in mind that this study was only carried out by three young dwarfs of the economic profession and their happiness has not been studied at all. We therefore deeply hope that this study does not induce envy and pride like rank weeds in the heart of the investigated superstars nor other researchers but rather encourage all of them to live

happily ever after.

Reference:
Benno Torgler & Nemanja Antic & Uwe Dulleck, 2007. "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the happiest of them all?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2007-16, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).

Retrieved from: http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/kyklos/v61y2008i2p309-319.html

Hi there!

Hi!

Welcome to my site of my economics theory! This will be a new site for my research and findings regarding economics. I realized my love of economics is expanding every single day. Because everything that i see now leads to me thinking about the economics theories that i've learnt. Afterall, economics is a fun subject isn't it? Economics is like the mechanism behind the world and certain behaviors.

I learnt an interesting fact from my lecturer and he said," The difference between an economist and a person studying psychology is that an economist looks at the incentives and opportunity costs behind an action while a psychology students looks at the internal and external factors affecting a person's decision."

I may come out with my own funny theories, so please do not take it seriously. It's just for the fun of it. After all, what is economics if you don't apply it to real life situations. And, i may not be that knowledgeable in certain areas of economics, so please don't be offended. It's called my theory.


The information i post here may only be used as reference. However, if you wish to use my work for any projects or research please inform me or contact me for a full copy.




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e.hqven