Research on Brain and Behaviour, and Agent-Based Modelling, will Deeply Impact Investigations on Well-Being (and Theoretical Economics)

This paper presents seven ‘theses’ that capture some important theoretical, methodological and empirical trends regarding research on happiness, and, more in general, theoretical economics and policy making. The trends concern: (1) the advent of new neuroscience techniques and the strengthening of existing ones: these are producing sound knowledge on animals’ and people’s brain mechanisms underlying their behaviour, decision processes, and subjective well-being; (2) the consequent strengthening of psychological theories on bounded rationality; (3) the new concrete possibility of substituting models’ microeconomic perfect-rationality assumptions with assumptions having a stronger empirical basis; (4) the strengthening of the view of economic systems as complex systems where macroeconomic phenomena emerge from the interplay of a multitude of composing elements, and, on their turn, affect the individual behaviours of such elements; (5) the resulting need/possibility of using agent-based models and simulations to study economic systems focussing on their features as complex systems; (6) the opportunity of using models furnished by the ‘new artificial intelligence’ to suitably represent peoples’ behaviours and learning processes in realistic ways in models; (7) the overall deep impact that these technical, theoretical, and empirical innovations will have on the research on well-being, theoretical economics and policy making. Overall, these trends indicate that there is an important imminent change in the air regarding the agenda of collective action of people and nations.