The Price of Happiness

Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President's Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He has served as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.

• 1. What's It Worth?; 2. Problems with Valuation; 3. Children and Animals; 4. Hard Cases; 5. Want to Know? On Ruining Popcorn; 6. Willingness to Pay vs. Willingness to Accept; 7. Nonquantifiable and Nonmonetizable; 8. Knightian Uncertainty; 9. Irreversibility; 10. Valuing Social Media; Epilogue: WTP Without Apology (Mostly).

'A deep and insightful exploration of a fundamental economic concept that is widely used and rarely interrogated. Sunstein is one of the world's sharpest minds, and his critical analysis of the 'willingness to pay' offers good answers and better questions. Anyone interested in behavioral economics and public policy should put a high value on this excellent book.' Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of the New York Times best-seller Stumbling on Happiness