Measuring Happiness

Strikes a great balance between the popular and the scientific. It explains a great number of scientific studies very clearly so as to make happiness research extremely accessible to, and enjoyable for, non-economists. For the more scientifically minded, it contains an appendix with an expansion of all the hard-core data. This means that the book reaches a wide audience, from philosophers, for whom it adds an empirical perspective on happiness, to the educated general public interested in the connection between money and happiness, to students in economics, philosophy, sociology, and psychology. The authors also find middle ground between objectively presenting the facts and making a case for their interpretation of them. This does not at any point seem forced, which speaks to the persuasiveness of their arguments. It is quite a feat to present, summarize, and synthesize so many different studies in happiness research and all their diverging, conflicting conclusions, and have the result read like a coherent narrative about money and happiness with a good plot rather than as an over- whelming number of facts. All in all, this is a clearly organized and well-written book that addresses the relationship between money and happiness. Its major strengths are its accessibility, its thorough presentation of the findings of happiness research, and its critical examination of the value and limitations of this research. Measuring Happiness makes you appreciate both how valuable and how limited happiness research really is.

Joachim Weimann is Full Professor of Economic Policy at Otto-von-Guericke-Universit t Magdeburg, and head of MaXlLab, the Magdeburg Laboratory for Experimental Economics.Andreas Knabe is Full Professor and Chair of Public Economics at Otto-von-Guericke-Univers t Magdeburg.Ronnie Sch b is Full Professor of International Public Economies at the School of Business and Economics at Freie Universit t in Berlin.

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