William Stanley Jevons and Francis Ysidro Edgeworth: Two Pioneers of Happiness Economics

Abstract

This paper opens up with some issues which are fundamentally relevant to how Happiness Economics studies are presently conducted, and then sets out to show that for prominent neoclassical authors W. S. Jevons and F. Y. Edgeworth the object of Economics was to maximise happiness and that, in this, they coincide with current economists working in this research area. We show that the interest in happiness is not new but leans on a significant economic tradition linked to the Utilitarian philosophy that dates to the second half of the 19th century.