ABSTRACT
As a field, economics explores the ways in which individuals and societies produce, consume, and distribute goods and services. Fundamentally, the focus of economics is on the choices people make under conditions of scarcity. A standard way of framing economics is to see it as the study of rational choice and of the consequences these choices have for the economy as a whole. Standard economics embraces a preference satisfaction model of human behavior, which maintains that rational actors make choices based on their preferences and that they can learn about their preferences by looking at their choices, for rational actors consistently choose to satisfy their preferences. In this vein, Bruni and Porta encourage the “return of happiness to economics,” emphasizing that the moral justification for the economist is to be found in “the persuasion that increases in wealth, income, or goods generally create the preconditions for greater well-being and happiness”.
