The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individual measures of subjective well-being. This paper suggests that these two findings are consistent with the presence of relative income terms in the utility function. Income may be evaluated relative to others (social comparison) or to oneself in the past (habituation). We review the evidence on relative income from the subjective well-being literature. We also discuss the relation (or not) between happiness and utility, and discuss some nonhappiness research (behavioral, experimental, neurological) related to income comparisons. We last consider how relative income in the utility function can affect economic models of behavior in the domains of consumption, investment, economic growth, savings, taxation, labor supply, wages, and migration.

Relative Income, Happiness and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles

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Relative income, happiness, and utility : an explanation for the Easterlin paradox and other puzzles

In this revised second edition, Deirdre McCloskey demonstrates how economic discourse employs metaphor, authority, symmetry and other rhetorical means of persuasion. ""The Rhetoric of Economics"" shows economists to be human persuaders and poets of the marketplace, even in their most technical and mathematical moods. It is further enhanced by three new chapters and two new bibliographies.

The Rhetoric of Economics

Introduction to the Science of Sociology

“Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skillful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits.”—Bernard Mandeville, 1714Corruption, some say, is endemic in all governments. Yet it has received remarkably little attention from students of government. Not only is the study of corruption prone to moralism, but it involves one of those aspects of government in which the interests of the politician and the political scientist are likely to conflict. It would probably be rather difficult to obtain (by honest means) a visa to a developing country which is to be the subject of a corruption study.One of the first charges levelled at the previous regime by the leaders of the coup in the less developed country is “corruption.” And generally the charge is accurate. One type of reaction to this among observers is highly moralistic and tends to see corruption as evil. “Throughout the fabric of public life in newly independent States,” we are told in a recent work on the subject, “runs the scarlet thread of bribery and corruption …” which is like a weed suffocating better plants. Another description of new states informs us that “corruption and nepotism rot good intentions and retard progressive policies.”Others have reacted against this moralistic approach and warn us that we must beware of basing our beliefs about the cause of coups on post-coup rationalizations, and also of judging the social consequences of an act from the motives of the individuals performing it. Under some circumstances Mandeville is right that private vice can cause public benefit.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055400135476

Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

The Fable of the Bees.

The fable of the bees, or, Private vices, publick benefits.Vol. 1 : Mandeville's Fable of the bees (Variant.)

The Fable of the Bees: or, Private vices, Publick Benefits, Vol. 2: or, Private vices, Publick Benefits

This edition includes, in addition to the most pertinent sections of The Fable's two volumes, a selection from Mandeville's An Enquiry into the Origin of Honor and selections from two of Mandeville's most important sources: Pierre Bayle and the Jansenist Pierre Nicole. Hundert's Introduction places Mandeville in a number of eighteenth-century debates--particularly that of the nature and morality of commercial modernity--and underscores the degree to which his work stood as a central problem, not only for his immediate English contemporaries, but for such philosophers as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. The selections are substantive enough to faithfully represent Mandeville the social theorist, and compact enough to be used in courses that can afford to spend no more than a week on his work.

The fable of the bees : and other writings

Introduction: Mandeville in Holland London physician and fabulist female dialogues Richard Steele, Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. and "The Tatler" Mrs Crackenthorpe, the "Society of Ladies", Abigail Baldwin and "The Female Tatler" the Lucinda-Artesia papers. A note on the text text of the Lucinda-Artesia papers in "The Female Tatler".

Bernard Mandeville

Papers

The Fable of the Bees.

The fable of the bees, or, Private vices, publick benefits.Vol. 1 : Mandeville's Fable of the bees (Variant.)

The Fable of the Bees: or, Private vices, Publick Benefits, Vol. 2: or, Private vices, Publick Benefits

The fable of the bees : and other writings

By a Society of Ladies: Essays in the Female Tatler