An Economy Of Well Being

Help build a world based on flourishing well-being for both the human family and nature In the face of political, financial, and environmental upheaval, it's difficult to slow down and build lives of mindfulness and joy. These things are within reach, but how can we go about creating a new world, using common-sense economics? In An Economy of Well-being, author Mark Anielski presents a practical guide for building a new economy of well-being to help communities and nations become more flourishing and happier places to live. In this follow-up to his best-selling The Economics of Happiness, Anielski addresses key questions including: How can our personal and family assets be strengthened for a more fulfilling life of meaning and purpose? How can neighborhoods and cities become flourishing economies of well-being by making the best of abundant community assets? how can organizations, communities and financial institutions measure, manage and finance assets to achieve high levels of well-being? An Economy of Well-being responds to a common yearning for common-sense tools to orient our lives, our businesses, and our communities towards well-being. This is ideal reading for anyone who wishes to contribute to building happier, more mindful communities, and ultimately lives of joy and meaning.

Economists have long sought to maximise economic growth, believing this to be their best contribution to improving human welfare. That approach is not sustainable in the face of ongoing issues such as global climate change, environmental damage, rising inequality and enduring poverty. Alternatives must be found. This open access book addresses that challenge. It sets out a wellbeing economics framework that directly addresses fundamental issues affecting wellbeing outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the capabilities approach of Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, the book demonstrates how persons can enhance prosperity through their own actions and through collaboration with others. The book examines national public policy, but its analysis also focuses on choices made by individuals, households, families, civil society, local government and the global community. It therefore offers important insights for anyone concerned with improving personal wellbeing and community prosperity.

Practical solutions for building economies of well-being based on Genuine Wealth.

Economic growth is a constant mantra of politicians, economists and the media. Few understand what it is, but they love and follow it blindly. The reality is that since the global financial crisis, growth has vanished in the more industrialised economies and in the so-called developing countries. Politicians may be panicking, but is this really a bad thing? Using real-life examples and innovative research, acclaimed political economist Lorenzo Fioramonti lays bare society’s perverse obsession with economic growth by showing its many flaws, paradoxes and inconsistencies. He argues that the pursuit of growth often results in more losses than gains and in damage, inequalities and conflicts. By breaking free from the growth mantra, we can build a better society that puts the wellbeing of all at its centre. A wellbeing economy would have tremendous impact on everything we do, boosting small businesses and empowering citizens as the collective leaders of tomorrow. Wellbeing Economy is a manifesto for radical change in South Africa and beyond.

In The Pursuit of Happiness, the latest addition to the Brookings FOCUS series, Carol Graham explores what we know about the determinants of happiness, acrossand within countries at different stages of development. She then takes a look at just what we can do with that new knowledge and clearly presents both the promise and thepotential pitfalls of injecting the "economics of happiness" into public policymaking. This burgeoning field, largely a product of collaboration between economists and psychologists, is gaining great currency worldwide. One of a handful of pioneers to studythis topic a mere decade ago, Graham is understandably excited about how far the concept has come and its possible utility in the future. The British, French, and Braziliangovernments already have introduced happiness metrics into their benchmarks of national progress, and the U.S. government could follow suit. But "happiness" as a yardstick to help measure a nation's well-being is still a relatively new approach, and many questions remain unanswered. The Pursuit of Happiness spotlights the innovative contributions of happiness research to the dismal science. But it also raises a cautionary note about the issues that stillneed to be addressed before policymakers can make best use of them. An effective definition of well-being that goes beyond measuring income —the Gross National Productapproach —could very well lead to improved understanding of poverty and economic welfare. But the question remains: how best to measure and quantify happiness? While scholars have developed rigorous measures of well-being that can be included in our statistics —as the British are already doing —to what degree should we use such metrics to shape and evaluate policy, particularly in assessing development outcomes? Graham considers a number of unanswered questions, such as whether policy should be more concerned with increasing day-to-day contentment or with providing greater opportunity to build a fulfilling life. Other issues include whether we care more about the happiness of today's citizens or that of future generations. Policies such as reducing our fiscal deficits or reforming our health care system, for example, typically require sacrificing current consumption and immediate well-being for better long-run outcomes. Another is whether policy should focus on reducing misery or raising general levels ofwell-being beyond their relatively high levels, in the same way that reducing poverty is only one choice among many objectives in our macroeconomic policy. Employing the new metrics without attention to these questions could produce mistakes that might undermine the long-term prospects for a truly meaningful economics of well-being. Despite this cautionary note, Graham points out that it is surely a positive development that some of our public attention is going to better understanding and enhancing the well-being of our citizens, rather than emphasizing the rootsof their divide.

Curiously, economists, whose discipline has much to do with human well-being, have shied away from factoring the study of happiness into their work. Happiness, they might say, is an ''unscientific'' concept. This is the first book to establish empirically the link between happiness and economics--and between happiness and democracy. Two respected economists, Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer, integrate insights and findings from psychology, where attempts to measure quality of life are well-documented, as well as from sociology and political science. They demonstrate how micro- and macro-economic conditions in the form of income, unemployment, and inflation affect happiness. The research is centered on Switzerland, whose varying degrees of direct democracy from one canton to another, all within a single economy, allow for political effects to be isolated from economic effects. Not surprisingly, the authors confirm that unemployment and inflation nurture unhappiness. Their most striking revelation, however, is that the more developed the democratic institutions and the degree of local autonomy, the more satisfied people are with their lives. While such factors as rising income increase personal happiness only minimally, institutions that facilitate more individual involvement in politics (such as referendums) have a substantial effect. For countries such as the United States, where disillusionment with politics seems to be on the rise, such findings are especially significant. By applying econometrics to a real-world issue of general concern and yielding surprising results, Happiness and Economics promises to spark healthy debate over a wide range of the social sciences.

Reporting on cutting-edge advances in economics, this book presents a selection of commentaries that reveal the weaknesses of several core economics concepts. Economics is a vigorous and progressive science, which does not lose its force when particular parts of its theory are empirically invalidated; instead, they contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. By discussing problematic theoretical assumptions and drawing on the latest empirical research, the authors question specific hypotheses and reject major economic ideas from the “Coase Theorem” to “Say’s Law” and “Bayesianism.” Many of these ideas remain prominent among politicians, economists and the general public. Yet, in the light of the financial crisis, they have lost both their relevance and supporting empirical evidence. This fascinating and thought-provoking collection of 71 short essays written by respected economists and social scientists from all over the world will appeal to anyone interested in scientific progress and the further development of economics.

Can money buy happiness? Is income a reliable measure for life satisfaction? In this book, three economists explore the happiness-prosperity connection, investigating how economists measure life satisfaction and well-being. --