Are Happy People Ethical People? Evidence from North America and Europe
University of Missouri Agricultural Economics Working Paper No. AEWP 2004-8
29 Pages Posted: 29 Jul 2004
Date Written: July 2004
Abstract
We examine empirically the relationship between happiness and the ethical decisions of individuals. We use data from the 1995-97 wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) to test the hypothesis that the relationship between happiness and ethics is bicausal in the sense that personal ethics affects one's happiness while happiness also affects ethical preferences and proclivities. We find that happiness increases in ethical proclivities and that greater happiness results in improved ethical judgments, after correcting for bicausality and controlling for income and other factors.
Keywords: Happiness, subjective well-being, ethics
JEL Classification: D63, D99, Z13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
By Ed Diener
-
What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?
By Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer
-
Culture and Subjective Well-Being
By William Tov and Ed Diener
-
A Note on Unhappiness and Unemployment Duration
By Andrew Clark
-
Happiness, Economy and Institutions
By Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer
-
Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress
By Ed Diener, Eunkook Suh, ...
-
Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?
By Alberto F. Alesina, Rafael Di Tella, ...