Richard Epstein on Happiness, Inequality, and Envy

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Books, History, Science, Philosophy, Courses, Interviews, Business, Economics, Ethics, Education

4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2008

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the relationship between happiness and wealth, the effects of inequality on happiness, and the economics of envy and altruism. He also applies the theory of evolution to explain some of the findings of the happiness literature.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:12.5	I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover
0:17.3	Institution.
0:18.7	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast,
0:25.8	and find links to other information related to today's conversation.
0:29.9	Our email address is mailadicontalk.org.
0:33.6	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.3	My guest today is Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor
0:41.2	of Law at the University of Chicago.
0:43.7	He's also the Peter and Kristen Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
0:47.7	Richard, welcome back to Econ Talk.
0:49.3	It's always nice to be here.
0:51.2	Our topic today is the burgeoning research on happiness and its importance in economics.
0:57.5	Give us some background on how that literature has evolved, how it's conducted.
1:01.5	Sure.
1:02.5	I mean, one of the interesting things about the standard models of economics is they become
1:07.4	tractable in one way because what they do is they assume that people have perfectly
1:12.3	well-ordered utility functions.
1:14.3	They're self-interested.
1:15.3	They care about themselves.
1:17.0	Generally speaking, the more they have, the better they are.
1:19.9	They're by and large and different to the way in which other people feel.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.