Academic

Harrison on Regulation & Happiness

By Lawrence Solum

Jeffrey Lynch Harrison (University of Florida - Fredric G. Levin College of Law) has posted Regulation, Deregulation, and Happiness on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Happiness, in general, is in many respects the topic du jour. A great deal of theoretical and empirical work has been devoted to dissecting it. Studies of happiness have crossed over to law, and the result is an addition to the long list of the list of ?law and? interdisciplinary areas. In fact, in 2010, Eric Posner and Matthew Alder presented an excellent book of readings the title of which is Law and Happiness. Peter Henry Huang has written the definitive survey of law and happiness literature. My own writing has reflected on the promise of happiness research and the difficulties of implementing its teachings. Most of the interdisciplinary work evaluates the potential impact of happiness on policy or programs. For example, in response to evidence that hosting large scale sports events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl may not be unqualified economic successes, work is now being conducted to assess the impact of those events on happiness. The teachings of happiness scholarship has yet to be applied to the traditional rationales for business regulation and the issue of how regulation could be altered, if at all, by considerations of happiness. This is the topic to which most of what follows is devoted.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on December 09, 2010 (boomark / email).