The Price of Happiness

Höfundur: Cass R. Sunstein (Útgáfa: 0)
The Price of Happiness

Kaup valmöguleikar

People often 'miswant.' They buy goods that do not make them happy and refuse to buy goods that would make their lives better. In The Price of Happiness, Cass R. Sunstein focuses on people's 'willingness to pay,' which is the foundation for free markets. He argues that willingness to pay deserves respect, and high honors in the annals of history, when buyers know what they are getting. It's when buyers lack information, or suffer from behavioral biases, that they might miswant.

Special conundrums also arise when we try to monetize goods we don't normally consider in monetary terms, like pristine areas, human dignity, and social media. Exploring behavioral biases and their effect on human welfare, Sunstein shows how behavioral economics can be used to increase human happiness.

Nánar um bókina

Útgefandi
Cambridge University Press
ISBN
9781009843669
Print ISBN
9781009843652
Format
ePub
Útgáfa
0
Höfundar
Cass R. Sunstein
Tungumál
English
Útgefið
2026-08-20
Prent takmörkun á líftíma
10
Prent takmörkun
2
Afritunar takmörkun
2
Flokkar
Hagfræði

Kaflar

  • Cover
  • Half title
  • Title page
  • Imprints page
  • Contents
  • Tables
  • Preface
  • 1 What’s It Worth?
  • Information and Experience
  • Regulators and WTP
  • Welfare
  • Poverty
  • Autonomy and Agency
  • Your WTP, My WTP
  • Monetizing Risks
  • People and Risks
  • Countries
  • Being Pragmatic
  • Are There Easy Cases?
  • 2 Problems with Valuation
  • “Miswanting”
  • Rights
  • Information and Behavioral Market Failures
  • Democracy and Markets
  • The Big Guns: Inalienability and Commodification
  • Collective Action Problems Redux and Generalized
  • Information and Behavioral Biases Redux
  • Inequality
  • Incommensurability and Modes of Valuation
  • Valuation and Monetization
  • 3 Children, Animals, and Third Parties
  • Kids: The Problem
  • Kids: A Possible Solution
  • Nonhuman Animals
  • Third-Party Effects
  • 4 Hard Cases
  • Welfare and the Diminishing Marginal Value of Money
  • Welfare and Fair Distribution
  • WTP and Kaldor-Hicks
  • The Tax System and Other Problems
  • 5 Want to Know? On Ruining Popcorn
  • Struggling with WTP
  • Costs and Benefits
  • Four Approaches
  • Costs
  • Shifting Preferences
  • Benefits
  • Back to WTP
  • WTP and Predictions
  • Taking Stock
  • 6 Willingness to Pay versus Willingness to Accept
  • The Difference
  • The Choice
  • 7 Nonquantifiable and Nonmonetizable
  • Without Monetization
  • Challenges
  • Lack of Information
  • Practice
  • Simplifying Life
  • Floors and Ceilings
  • Point Estimates
  • Expected Value
  • Nonquantifiable versus Nonmonetizable
  • Quantification without Monetization
  • Monetization without Quantification
  • Comparisons
  • Conditional Justifications
  • A Hope
  • 8 Knightian Uncertainty
  • Knight and Keynes
  • Any Port in a Storm
  • Maximin
  • Knightian Uncertainty and Precautions
  • Objections
  • The Argument Is Trivial
  • Infinite Risk Aversion
  • Uncertainty Does Not Exist
  • Knightian Uncertainty Is Pretty Rare
  • On Sleeping Well at Night
  • 9 Irreversibility
  • Losses, Money, and Precautions
  • Existence Value, Option Value
  • Options, Imperfect Knowledge, and Precautions
  • Seriousness and Sunk Costs
  • Sunk Costs and Imperfect Knowledge
  • Irreversibilities and Optimal Delay
  • Irreversibilities, Distribution, and the Least Well-Off
  • Precommitment Value
  • Paying a Premium
  • 10 Valuing Social Media
  • A Superendowment Effect
  • Demanding Payment to Be Made Worse Off
  • Bad Goods
  • Low and High
  • Epilogue
  • Appendix A Valuing Mortality and Morbidity
  • Appendix B Selected Examples of Breakeven Analysis
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index