Book Reviews 803
References
Axelrod, Robert, and William D. Hamilton. 1981. "The Evolution
of Cooperation." Science 211 (4489): 1390-96.
Bernhard, Helen, Urs Fischbacher, and Ernst Fehr. 2006.
"Parochial Altruism in Humans." Nature 442 (7105): 912-15.
Choi, Jung-Kyoo, and Samuel Bowles. 2007. "The Coevolution of
Parochial Altruism and War." Sci ence 318 (5850): 636-40.
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1973. "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense
Except in the Light of Evolution." American Biology Teacher 35 (3):
125-29.
Garcia, Julian, and Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh. 2011.
"Evolution of Parochial Altruism by Multi level Selection."
Evolution and Human Behavior 32 (4): 277-87.
Haidt, Jonathan. 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are
Divided by Politics and Religion. New York and Toronto: Random
House, Pantheon Books.
van Veelen, Matthijs. 2005. "On the Use of the Price
Equation." Journal of Theoretical Biology 237 (4): 412-26.
van Veelen, Matthijs, Julian Garcia, Maurice W. Sabe
lis, and Martijn Egas. 2012. "Group Selection and Inclusive
Fitness Are Not Equivalent; The Price
Equation vs. Models and Statistics." Journal of Theoretical
Biology 299: 64-80.
van Veelen, Matthijs, and Astrid Hopfensitz. 2007. "In Love and
War: Altruism, Norm Formation, and Two Different Types of Group
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Wilson, David Sloan and Edward O. Wilson. 2007.
"Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Socio
biology." Quarterly Review of Biology 82 (4): 327-48.
Matthijs van Veelen
University oj Amsterdam
I Health, Education, and Welfare
The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well
Being. By Carol Graham. Brookings Focus
Books. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution
Press, 2011. Pp. vii, 164. $24.95. ISBN 978-0 8157-2127-7. JEL
2011-1462
Brookings' Focus book series aims to present
policy issues of interest to a broad audience. This
short book by Carol Graham contributes to this
series, and presents a number of topics in the
burgeoning economics of well-being. The book is divided into
five chapters, each of
which has extensive endnotes. The first previews a number of the
issues that will appear later in the
book, and makes the central point that happiness data can add to
the understanding of individual
well-being provided by the analysis of income and
revealed preferences.
Chapter 2 attempts to set out what we mean by
happiness. A broad distinction is made between
a fulfilling life (with agency or capabilities to be able to
change one's life) and contentment. These
are called the Aristotelian and Benthamite views
of happiness, although the academic literature
often refers to Eudaimonic and Hedonic well
being, respectively. Most surveys ask some kind
of hedonic question, on happiness, satisfaction, or Cantril's
"best possible life" (ladder) question. An open question in the
empirical literature is the
degree to which meaning and capability, on the
one hand, and happiness, on the other, are cor
related. }. S. Mill's happy pig suggests that these
are not synonyms; but in practice they could be
quite closely matched. It is however possible that
acquiring agency may lead to lower happiness, at
least in the short run. As such, potentially valuable
long-run policies may be initially disruptive, and
individuals certainly dislike uncertainty. Equally, too much
happiness may reduce any incentive
for action. Overall, there are a number of intrigu
ing points here, although the development is not
always particularly easy to follow.
Carol Graham is on surer ground in chapter 3, on Happiness
around the World, which draws
on some parts of her recent Oxford University Press book of the
same name. Much research
has concerned developed countries; but most
people don't live in developed countries. Cross
country empirical analysis reveals that some of
the happiness correlates are very similar across
countries . . . but not all of them. In particular, the effect
of labor-force status suggests that there
may be more choice in this respect in developed relative to
developing countries. Overall, this is a
useful potted history of what happens when we
ask identical well-being questions to individuals
in very disparate countries.
Chapter 4 deals with adaptation and social
comparisons. If either pertain, then it is not
enough to know how much X an individual has
to evaluate their well-being; we also need to
know how much X others in the reference group have (social
comparisons), or how much X the
individual used to have in the past (adaptation).
This content downloaded from 14.139.244.174 on Tue, 24 Nov 2015
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804 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. L (September 2012)
At least two useful points are bought out here.
First, the speed of adaptation depends on the
phenomenon under consideration. Although evidence remains
sketchy, individuals seem to
adapt to crime and to corruption, whereas they do not adapt to
freedom. Further, individuals
do not adapt to uncertainty (which is one rea
son why crises reduce well-being so much, inter
alia). The second is that it can be rather diffi
cult to be a utilitarian in these circumstances.
Are unhappy rich people with high expectations more deserving
than the poor who have learnt
to expect little? If individuals adapt to the "bad
equilibrium" of high corruption, does that mean
that we don't need to worry about it any more?
Various incarnations of Sen's happy slaves wan
der freely throughout this chapter. The last chapter briefly
refers to Gross National
Happiness versus GNP as a measure of societal
progress, starting out from the established criti
cism that some economic activity does not lead
to the kind of society in which we would want
to live. The alternatives discussed are (1) the
HDI, (2) objective list accounts, (3) preference satisfaction
accounts, and (4) well-being scores.
Various measures of the latter are available, but
do not all pull in the same direction, as chapter 2
noted. The pros and cons of each, as well as the
numerous lacunae in our knowledge in terms of
what a society "should" want, are reviewed here.
With respect to the terms of reference of
the Brookings' Focus series, it could be argued that this book
has not been an unqualified suc
cess. This surely bears witness to the difficulty of writing a
"happiness book" that treads the
uneasy middle ground between academic treatise
and doubtful pseudo-scientific self-help man
ual. There is no guarantee that the man in the
Clapham omnibus will be able to read this book.
Despite its medium-brow remit, there is some
rather techie language and a certain amount of
prior knowledge of the general area would seem
to be presumed. On the other hand, academics
will be able to appeal to it as a one-stop-shop of
Graham's activity over the past ten or so years. For students
who wonder just what it is that
"Happiness Economists" (a terrible term, but
it is surely too late to change it now) are up to, and whether
it is of any use, this is however argu
ably quite a useful piece of work. The tone is
often quite frank: research results frequently do
not walk in step with each other, and we really don't know what
is going on. That is indeed what
a lot of research is like. The sense of a patchy cover of
knowledge, continually evolving, some
times accreting into what looks like a regularity, sometimes
collapsing under the weight of poor data, bad analysis, and
contradictory results, is a truthful rendition of how I see the
field. In
Happiness Economics, the answers are not all cut
and dried: what works in one country may well
not do so in another, the discussion of causality is often
frighteningly absent, and our interaction
with Psychology sometimes feels tectonic: long
periods of misleading quiet followed by serious
clashes. I would be unhappy (so to speak) were
the representation of research made in this book
to dissuade interested students from contributing to the area:
it is precisely the potential for dis
covery that makes it so attractive. In the end, it
may well be in this respect that Carol Graham's
somewhat fragmented, but undoubtedly passion ate, book works the
best.
Andrew Clark
Paris School of Economics
J Labor and Demographic Economics
Migration and the Welfare State: Political
Economy Policy Formation. By Assaf Razin, Efraim Sadka, and
Benjarong Suwankiri.
Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2011. Pp. xii, 168. $32.00.
ISBN 978-0-262-01610-0.
JEL 2011-1472
Restrictions on the international mobility of
labor are arguably the single largest policy dis
tortion that besets the international economy. A
variety of studies suggest that even a small reduc
tion in barriers to migration will result in large welfare
benefits to the global economy (Walmsley and Winters 2003;
Pritchett 2006). Nevertheless,
despite the huge gains from easing restrictions to
international labor mobility, no forum of multilat
eral negotiations addresses this issue. It is simply not on the
negotiating table. Indeed, governments
point toward the prospective backlash against
immigration as being responsible. However, until
very recently there has been very little analytical
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09:47:43 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Article Contentsp. 803p. 804
Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50,
No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2012) pp. 643-953Front MatterTechnology Growth and
Expenditure Growth in Health Care [pp. 645-680]Globalization, Brain
Drain, and Development [pp. 681-730]Forensic Economics [pp.
731-769]Forum: Two Views of the Mirrlees Review on Tax Policy in
Great BritainThe Mirrlees Review and the State of Public Economics
[pp. 770-780]The Mirrlees Review [pp. 781-790]
Book ReviewsA: General Economics and TeachingReview: untitled
[pp. 791-792]Review: untitled [pp. 792-795]Review: untitled [pp.
795-797]
D: MicroeconomicsReview: untitled [pp. 797-803]
I: Health, Education, and WelfareReview: untitled [pp.
803-804]
J: Labor and Demographic EconomicsReview: untitled [pp.
804-806]Review: untitled [pp. 806-807]
L: Industrial OrganizationReview: untitled [pp. 807-809]
N: Economic HistoryReview: untitled [pp. 809-818]Review:
untitled [pp. 818-819]Review: untitled [pp. 819-821]
O: Economic Development, Technological Change, and GrowthReview:
untitled [pp. 821-823]
P: Economic SystemsReview: untitled [pp. 823-824]
Z: Other Special TopicsReview: untitled [pp. 825-828]
Annotated Listing of New BooksA: General Economics and Teaching
[pp. 829-832]B: History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and
Heterodox Approaches [pp. 832-835]C: Mathematical and Quantitative
Methods [pp. 835-837]D: Microeconomics [pp. 838-844]E:
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics [pp. 844-847]F: International
Economics [pp. 847-854]G: Financial Economics [pp. 854-864]H:
Public Economics [pp. 864-868]I: Health, Education, and Welfare
[pp. 868-873]J: Labor and Demographic Economics [pp. 873-879]K: Law
and Economics [pp. 879-881]L: Industrial Organization [pp.
881-891]M: Business Administration and Business Economics Marketing
Accounting [pp. 891-895]N: Economic History [pp. 895-900]O:
Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth [pp.
900-911]P: Economic Systems [pp. 911-914]Q: Agricultural and
Natural Resource Economics Environmental and Ecological Economics
[pp. 914-922]R: Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation
Economics [pp. 922-927]Y: Miscellaneous Categories [pp. 927-931]Z:
Other Special Topics [pp. 931-932]New Journals [pp. 932-938]
JEL Classification System [pp. 939-953]Back Matter
