IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eis/articl/211dfaria.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Emotions, Happiness and Growth: Spinoza, James, and Ramsey

Author

Listed:
  • Joao Ricardo Faria

Abstract

This paper adapts the Ethics of Spinoza into the Ramsey growth model and shows that the way people conceive and understand life, related to emotions of joy and sorrow, affects economic performance. The model has multiple equilibria: The Spinoza solution, optimism, leads to greater capital accumulation, income and consumption levels, while William James's solution, pessimism, leads to a worse economic performance. The Ramsey model, where emotions balance, lies in between these two solutions, showing that the neoclassical growth model can be seen as a particular case of the Spinoza model. Finally, regarding the relationship between emotions and economics, in the Spinoza and William James solutions emotions and happiness are determined independently from economic variables. Only in the Ramsey case are emotions explained by income and consumption.

Suggested Citation

  • Joao Ricardo Faria, 2011. "Emotions, Happiness and Growth: Spinoza, James, and Ramsey," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 16(2), pages 81-92, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eis:articl:211dfaria
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economicissues.org.uk/Files/2011/211dfaria.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, 2003. "The hidden persuaders: institutions and individuals in economic theory," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 27(2), pages 159-175, March.
    2. Robert H. Frank & Thomas Gilovich & Dennis T. Regan, 1993. "Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 159-171, Spring.
    3. Clark, Andrew E & Georgellis, Yannis & Sanfey, Peter, 2001. "Scarring: The Psychological Impact of Past Unemployment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 68(270), pages 221-241, May.
    4. Frey, Bruno S & Stutzer, Alois, 2000. "Happiness, Economy and Institutions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 918-938, October.
    5. Oswald, Andrew J, 1997. "Happiness and Economic Performance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1815-1831, November.
    6. Bruno Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2005. "Happiness Research: State and Prospects," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 63(2), pages 207-228.
    7. Michael S. Lawlor, 2006. "William James's psychological pragmatism: habit, belief and purposive human behaviour," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 30(3), pages 321-345, May.
    8. Bruno S. Frey, 2018. "Economics of Happiness," SpringerBriefs in Economics, Springer, number 978-3-319-75807-7, March.
    9. Jack Barbalet, 2008. "Pragmatism and economics: William James' contribution," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 32(5), pages 797-810, September.
    10. Twomey, Paul, 1998. "Reviving Veblenian Economic Psychology," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 22(4), pages 433-448, July.
    11. John R. Carter & Michael D. Irons, 1991. "Are Economists Different, and If So, Why?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 171-177, Spring.
    12. Faria, Joao Ricardo, 1998. "The Economics of Witchcraft and the Big Eye Effect," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 537-546.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Crowley, Frank & Walsh, Edel, 2018. "How important are Personal Ties, Trust and Tolerance for Life Satisfaction in Europe?," SRERC Working Paper Series SRERCWP2018-1, University College Cork (UCC), Spatial and Regional Economic Research Centre (SRERC).
    2. Binder, Martin & Coad, Alex, 2011. "From Average Joe's happiness to Miserable Jane and Cheerful John: using quantile regressions to analyze the full subjective well-being distribution," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 275-290, August.
    3. Lutz C. Kaiser, 2005. "Gender-Job Satisfaction Differences across Europe: An Indicator for Labor Market Modernization," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 537, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Kaiser, Lutz C., 2005. "Gender-Job Satisfaction Differences across Europe: An Indicator for Labor Market Modernization," IZA Discussion Papers 1876, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Andrew E. Clark, 2018. "Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness: Where Next?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 245-269, June.
    6. Easterlin, Richard A. & Angelescu McVey, Laura & Switek, Maggie & Sawangfa, Onnicha & Zweig, Jacqueline Smith, 2011. "The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited," IZA Discussion Papers 5799, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Bruno Frey, 2011. "Tullock challenges: happiness, revolutions, and democracy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 269-281, September.
    8. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Georgellis, Yannis & Tsitsianis, Nicholas & Yin, Ya Ping, 2009. "Income and happiness across Europe: Do reference values matter?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 42-51, February.
    9. Jan Eichhorn, 2013. "Unemployment Needs Context: How Societal Differences between Countries Moderate the Loss in Life-Satisfaction for the Unemployed," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(6), pages 1657-1680, December.
    10. Francesca Acacia & Maria Cubel Sanchez, 2014. "Strategic voting and happiness," Chapters, in: Francesco Forte & Ram Mudambi & Pietro Maria Navarra (ed.), A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 7, pages 160-176, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. O'Donnell, Gus & Oswald, Andrew J., 2015. "National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 59-70.
    12. Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "On the curvature of the reporting function from objective reality to subjective feelings," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 369-372, September.
    13. Mariano Rojas, 2012. "Do People in Income Poverty Use Their Income Efficiently?: a Subjective Well-Being Approach," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-110, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.
    15. Welsch, Heinz, 2009. "Implications of happiness research for environmental economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 2735-2742, September.
    16. Jan Eichhorn, 2014. "The (Non-) Effect of Unemployment Benefits: Variations in the Effect of Unemployment on Life-Satisfaction Between EU Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 119(1), pages 389-404, October.
    17. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Viola Berlepsch, 2014. "Social Capital and Individual Happiness in Europe," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 357-386, April.
    18. Michael Shields & Stephen Wheatley Price & Mark Wooden, 2009. "Life satisfaction and the economic and social characteristics of neighbourhoods," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 22(2), pages 421-443, April.
    19. Luis Diaz‐Serrano & Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose, 2012. "Decentralization, Subjective Well‐Being, and the Perception of Institutions," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 179-193, May.
    20. Díaz Serrano, Lluís & Rodríguez Pose, Andrés, 2011. "Decentralization, happiness and the perception of institutions," Working Papers 2072/151812, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eis:articl:211dfaria. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dan Wheatley (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bsntuuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.