Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2
On the Problem of Measuring Happiness
Sabine Hossenfelder
; NORDITA
Full text: english pdf 576 Kb
page 289-301
downloads: 1.106
cite
APA 6th Edition
Hossenfelder, S. (2013). On the Problem of Measuring Happiness. Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 11 (3), 289-301. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2
MLA 8th Edition
Hossenfelder, Sabine. "On the Problem of Measuring Happiness." Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, vol. 11, no. 3, 2013, pp. 289-301. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2. Accessed 12 Sep. 2024.
Chicago 17th Edition
Hossenfelder, Sabine. "On the Problem of Measuring Happiness." Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems 11, no. 3 (2013): 289-301. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2
Harvard
Hossenfelder, S. (2013). 'On the Problem of Measuring Happiness', Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 11(3), pp. 289-301. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2
Vancouver
Hossenfelder S. On the Problem of Measuring Happiness. Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems [Internet]. 2013 [cited 2024 September 12];11(3):289-301. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2
IEEE
S. Hossenfelder, "On the Problem of Measuring Happiness", Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, vol.11, no. 3, pp. 289-301, 2013. [Online]. https://doi.org/10.7906/indecs.11.3.2
Abstract
The question of how to measure and aggregate happiness is more than a century old. In recent years, its relevance has risen due to efforts to replace the GDP with an index more indicative of well-being, though such efforts are fraught with serious conceptual problems. After briefly recalling these problems, we suggest to address them by using, instead of the common ordinal utility, an alternative quantity that is maximized in economic transactions. This quantity counts the number of future possibilities a commodity opens. The big advantage of this approach is that, in principle, the number of possibilities is an objective measure which allows for intra- and interpersonal comparison. We lay out the framework of the model and then discuss its relevance for social welfare. While we do here not explicitly compute a measure supplementing the GDP, we sketch how this could be done in practice.
Keywords
welfare function; alternatives to GDP
Hrčak ID:
106184
URI
https://hrcak.srce.hr/106184
Publication date:
23.7.2013.
Visits: 2.008
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