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"Hope is a little-studied concept in economics, but it's a fundamental aspect of the economy. We know that hope is largely a positive trait that helps individuals manage life's challenges, and its role is particularly important in how we think about the disadvantaged. Distinct from aspirations, which are tied to a specific goal, hope is a deeper sentiment that drives behavior. But there are many unanswered questions. Is hope genetically determined and, as such, a lasting trait that is resistant to negative shocks? Or is it more malleable? Can we restore hope in populations where it has been lost? Can the lessons from optimistic and resilient populations be generalized to other populations? Can interventions enhance hope? Economist Carol Graham seeks to expand on the established parameters of study and uses a mix of econometric analysis and in-depth field surveys, from both Latin American and the United States, to broaden our knowledge of hope. Drawing from other disciplines, such as biology and psychology, this book aims to demonstrate the potential benefits of incorporating hope into economic analysis, and especially into the analysis of human well-being. While this is relatively unknown territory, the book will bring to light empirical evidence that demonstrates that hope can improve people's life outcomes, that despair can destroy them, and that the effects of hope are strong enough to merit a deeper exploration. In the midst of a long-standing crisis of deaths of despair particularly afflicting the US and the shorter-term effects of the pandemic, a better and more serious social-scientific understanding of the power of hope could be critical to improving public health"--

The book reviews the theory and concepts of happiness, explaining how these concepts underpin a line of research that is both an attempt to understand the determinants of happiness and a tool for understanding the effects of a host of phenomena on human well being.

In The Pursuit of Happiness, the latest addition to the Brookings FOCUS series, Carol Graham explores what we know about the determinants of happiness, across and within countries at different stages of development. She then takes a look at just what we can do with that new knowledge and clearly presents both the promise and the potential pitfalls of injecting the “economics of happiness” into public policymaking. This burgeoning field, largely a product of collaboration between economists and psychologists, is gaining great currency worldwide. One of a handful of pioneers to study this topic a mere decade ago, Graham is understandably excited about how far the concept has come and its possible utility in the future. The British, French, and Brazilian governments already have introduced happiness metrics into their benchmarks of national progress, and the U.S. government could follow suit. But “happiness” as a yardstick to help measure a nation’s well-being is still a relatively new approach, and many questions remain unanswered. The Pursuit of Happiness spotlights the innovative contributions of happiness research to the dismal science. But it also raises a cautionary note about the issues that still need to be addressed before policymakers can make best use of them. An effective definition of well-being that goes beyond measuring income—the Gross National Product approach—could very well lead to improved understanding of poverty and economic welfare. But the question remains: how best to measure and quantify happiness? While scholars have developed rigorous measures of well-being that can be included in our statistics—as the British are already doing—to what degree should we use such metrics to shape and evaluate policy, particularly in assessing development outcomes? Graham considers a number of unanswered questions, such as whether policy should be more concerned with increasing day-to-day contentment or with providing greater opportunity to build a fulfilling life. Other issues include whether we care more about the happiness of today’s citizens or that of future generations. Policies such as reducing our fiscal deficits or reforming our health care system, for example, typically require sacrificing current consumption and immediate well-being for better long-run outcomes. Another is whether policy should focus on reducing misery or raising general levels of well-being beyond their relatively high levels, in the same way that reducing poverty is only one choice among many objectives in our macroeconomic policy. Employing the new metrics without attention to these questions could produce mistakes that might undermine the long-term prospects for a truly meaningful economics of well-being. Despite this cautionary note, Graham points out that it is surely a positive development that some of our public attention is going to better understanding and enhancing the well-being of our citizens, rather than emphasizing the roots of their divide.

Numerous arrests, trials, and imprisonments resulted after the attack (which then President Trump initiated) on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. Also, significant was the fact that the incoming President (Joesph Biden), initiated sweeping bills promoting millions of jobs, forgiving student debt, negotiating lower drug prices, and building infrastructure projects to benefit rural communities and cities across the United States. President Biden also initiated efforts to lower inflationary costs resulting from price gauging by company monopolies during the COVID Pandemic (2020-2022) and he promoted peace in Russia's initiated war on Ukraine as well as the devastating Israeli-Gaza conflict . President Biden and Kamala Harris, the first woman (and woman of color) Vice President), worked to resolve inefficiencies created by the pandemic and they significantly increased unionization. Many publications would be required to cover each of these events in detail. The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the significant and unprecedented events that occurred since the end of the pandemic, in the form of historical, fact-based poetry, with a touch of humor sprinkled throughout. Some of the topics include the attack on the United States Capitol (January 6, 2021), instigated by then-President Trump, and his blatant disregard for the law and massive corruption, as evidenced by his 91 felony charges, his arrests, and his convictions. Included is the Supreme Court's unprecedented presidential immunity ruling, the "oath-breaking insurrectionist's" (Supreme Court dissenting Justices' words) ongoing public denial of his verified 2020 election loss (as well as his private statements that he did lose the election), post-pandemic problems, women's rights, racism, civil rights abuses, the republican speakership's firings/elections, and the routine and chaotic infighting of the republicans. Each of us has our own unique set of experiences from the post-pandemic period, January 6, 2021 events, and President Biden's accomplishments and challenges, but we have also, in certain ways, lived through many of these events together. It is the author's intent that the series of historical poems presented here will serve as a brief summary of this extraordinary period in the history of the United States.

It all started with realtor Cara Gerard showing two-million-dollar properties in one of Brooklyn's favorite neighborhoods, a typical afternoon in real estate. Then Cara-and all of posh Park Slope-is stunned when she discovers the body of the borough's top broker, "dead as she can be" in the kitchen of a beautiful brownstone. Can Cara use her down-home Texas common sense and New York City street smarts to discover clues to the crime? With the help of her loyal friends and the attractive Detective Driscoll, will her sleuthing reveal the killer? Or will the case lead only to finding Cara in a life-threatening situation, herself?

The Declaration of Independence states that all people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these is the pursuit of happiness. But is happiness equally available to everyone in America today? How about elsewhere in the world? Carol Graham draws on cutting-edge research linking income inequality with well-being to show how the widening prosperity gap has led to rising inequality in people's beliefs, hopes, and aspirations. For the United States and other developed countries, the high costs of being poor are most evident not in material deprivation but rather in stress, insecurity, and lack of hope. The result is an optimism gap between rich and poor that, if left unchecked, could lead to an increasingly divided society. Graham reveals how people who do not believe in their own futures are unlikely to invest in them, and how the consequences can range from job instability and poor education to greater mortality rates, failed marriages, and higher rates of incarceration. She describes how the optimism gap is reflected in the very words people use--the wealthy use words that reflect knowledge acquisition and healthy behaviors, while the words of the poor reflect desperation, short-term outlooks, and patchwork solutions. She also explains why the least optimistic people in America are poor whites, not poor blacks or Hispanics. Happiness for All? highlights the importance of well-being measures in identifying and monitoring trends in life satisfaction and optimism--and misery and despair--and demonstrates how hope and happiness can lead to improved economic outcomes.

Countries worldwide are attempting difficult transitions from state-planned to market economies. Most of these countries have fragile democratic regimes that are threatened by the high social and political costs of reform. Governments—and ultimately societies—have to make hard choices about allocating scarce public resources as they undergo these transitions. A central, often controversial, and most poignant question is how to protect vulnerable groups and the poor. What compensation, what "safety net" will be provided for them? Carol Graham argues that safety nets can provide an environment in which economic reform is more politically sustainable and poverty can be permanently reduced. However, these two objectives frequently involve trade-offs, as vocal and organized opponents of reform (for obvious political reasons) often concern governments far more than the poor. These organized and less vulnerable groups tend to place heavy demands on the scarce resources available to governments at times of economic crisis. Governments that fail to address the social costs of reform, meanwhile, often face popular opposition that jeopardizes or even derails the entire market transition--the results of the September 1993 elections in Poland are a case in point. The author examines these trade-offs in detail, with a particular focus on how political and institutional contexts affect the kinds of safety nets that are implemented. For example, reaching the poor and vulnerable with safety nets tends to be more difficult in closed-party systems, such as in Senegal, where entrenched interest groups have a monopoly on state benefits. In contrast, dramatic political change or rapid implementation of economic reform undermines the influence of such groups and therefore can provide unique political opportunities to redirect resources to the poor, as in the case of Bolivia and Zambia. Rather than focus their efforts on organized interest groups--such as public sector

"Katharine Graham has been called the most powerful woman in the world, and she is perhaps one of the richest. In the wake of her decision to print the Pentagon Papers, she became the most famous newspaper publisher in America. During the Watergate investigation, Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, threatened, "Katie Graham is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." She didn't flinch and became, to many, a figure of awe." ""There's one word that brings us all together here tonight," Art Buchwald announced at her seventieth birthday party in 1987, "and that word is fear.'" The scores of luminaries gathered for the event - senators, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, columnists, movie stars, Cabinet secretaries, even the president of the United States - laughed appreciatively." "The laughter of some was tinged with amazement, for they knew her when her husband, Philip Graham - Harvard Law graduate, clerk to Justice Felix Frankfurter, pal of JFK and LBJ, a dazzler who had Washington eating from his palm - ran The Washington Post, which her father had given him. They would never have imagined that the timid wife who walked two steps behind her husband - "a big brown wren," one friend called her - could become the radiant woman toasted affectionately by Ronald Reagan." "Kay Graham had grown up in a house staffed by servants. Her father, Eugene Meyer, preoccupied by affairs of state and the economy (he headed the Federal Reserve Board and held other important posts), was a Wall Street millionaire turned public servant par excellence who became a newspaper publisher when he bought the bankrupt Washington Post in 1933. Her mother, Agnes Meyer - "sort of a Viking," as Kay remembered her, "very bright, and utterly contemptuous of everybody else" - tirelessly promoted her friendships with the likes of Auguste Rodin, Thomas Mann, John Dewey, and Adlai Stevenson, but alternately ignored and belittled her children. Marriage to a man once described as "Agnes Meyer in men's clothes" left Kay shrinking in the background, until the summer day in 1963 when Phil Graham killed himself and she was forced to take over the company." "Power, Privilege, and the Post is the story of how Kay Graham grew through sheer determination: at first anxiously dependent on the often patronizing men around her; then stunningly cruel, as she fired one after another of her top editors and executives; and finally triumphant, as she built a spectacularly profitable conglomerate and a newspaper that grew to have international influence."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book studies the effects of incorporating market incentives into the public goods arena. The studies show that the incorporation of new market incentives, such as vouchers in education and private social security systems, can have positive effects on the performance of public institutions. The

In "Happiness and Hardship," Carol Graham and Stefano Pettinato provide a new conceptual framework for analyzing the relationship between subjective well being and the political sustainability of market-oriented economic growth in 17 Latin American countries and Russia.