Happiness and Public Choice

Measuring individual welfare using data on reported subjective well-being has made great progress. It offers a new way of confronting public choice hypotheses with field data, e.g. with respect to partisan preferences on unemployment and inflation or rents in the public bureaucracy. Insights from public choice also help to assess the role of happiness measures in public policy. We emphasize that maximizing aggregate happiness as a social welfare function neglects incentive problems and political institutions while citizens are reduced to metric stations. The goal of happiness research should be to improve the nature of the processes through which individuals can express their preferences. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9681-y Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-45792 Accepted Version Originally published at: Frey, Bruno S; Stutzer, Alois (2010). Happiness and public choice. Public Choice, 144(3-4):557-573. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9681-y Happiness and Public Choice (mit Alois Stutzer) Public Choice Vol. 14 (September 2010): S. 557-573. Happiness and Public Choice Bruno S. Frey Alois Stutzer University of Zurich University of Basel and CREMA – Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Switzerland