Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/96297 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2014/060
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Economics has rediscovered happiness even though the discipline has always been about human wellbeing. A growing evidence suggests that happier people can be more productive and innovative, which leads to profitability and economic growth. Thus, there are concerted efforts to measure happiness and design policies to enhance it. Happiness metrics rank North African countries among the lowest, and worsening over time. This paper explores key contributing factors to decades of frustration and anger in North Africa, and how these sentiments play themselves out since the Arab revolutions. Though these societies are more than ever polarized along the secular/progressive and Islamist/conservative lines, any government must deliver on economic expectations that are surprisingly similar for both groups. Insights from happiness economics and models of successful countries can serve as guiding principles for reforms that can promote economic and non-economic dimensions of individual and communal wellbeing.
Subjects: 
economics of happiness
Arab Spring
North Africa
Islamic economics
freedom
governance
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9230-781-3
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
594.85 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.