What is happiness and how does it relate to buying a house?
This is a very interesting article about research on happiness and how this relates to buying a house. There are useful tips in here for you to maximize your happiness.
Monks, Not McMansions, May Hold the
Key to Happiness
By Katherine Salant
Saturday, February 10, 2007; F07
Most people think economists study money.
In fact, economists use various analytic tools to predict behavior. True, the majority of economists’ predictions deal with financial matters. When economists talk about new houses, for example, their focus is invariably on the factors that determine prices, such as mortgage interest rates.
But some economists have gone in a different direction. Rather than study dollars and cents, they have used the tools of their discipline to explain other phenomena, such as why people make certain choices.
In the past, economists assumed that an individual’s choices were always guided by rational self-interest. Today they recognize that human foibles, biases and our hunter-gatherer origins can often be critical factors.
University of Chicago economists Luis Rayo and Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate, have carried this approach one step further and used economics tools to predict which choices make people happy. Their research is based in part on study of recent developments in psychology, biology, evolution and neuroscience, including brain scans.
In a recent interview, Rayo discussed their research on happiness as it applies to the purchase of a new house, an enterprise that most find is fraught with emotion.
