Presentation Claudia Senik – The Economics of Happiness

Our current research topic is called “Digital Happiness” and we’re exploring new ideas about how companies should interact with their clients and employees. This time we want to share the idea and vision from professor Claudia Senik: ‘The Economics of Happiness’. Senik presented her vision to us and our clients during our event In Pursuit of Digital Happiness in Brussels on November 9-10. Professor Senik does research into income distribution and subjective well-being and is looking at possibilities to incorporate big data in her well being research. In this presentation she explains her findings, e.g. how income comparisons within firms influences the happiness of the employees. In the discussion with Michiel Boreel, professor Senik answers the ‘big question’ from her perspective: ‘Does Digital make us happier or more miserable?’. About Claudia Senik Claudia Senik was born in Paris, France, in 1964. A former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm), she wrote her PhD thesis at DELTA (EHESS). She is now full Professor at the University Paris-Sorbonne and Research Fellow at Paris School of Economics. Her main research interest is the micro-econometric analysis of income distribution and subjective well-being. She frequently appeals to a comparative approach, based on the different environments in Western versus Eastern Europe. She is in charge of several international scientific cooperation programs related to her field of research. About the In Pursuit of Digital Happiness events Two recent deep dives with a group of  IT Executives gave us more insights in how our current research topic “Digital Happiness” is going to evolve. We’ll share the videos recorded at these meetings that we’ve organized in the coming months. Both in the US (Chicago) and Europe (Brussels) business executives, media experts and academia shared their views on the massive transformative impact of digital technologies. The fundamentals on which the program In Pursuit of Digital Happiness was based are simple: the technological and financial limitations of digital progress have been dealt with. The real question to answer for businesses to be successful in the society that emerges is, “What do we desire?” Happiness, in the broad definition by the school of positive psychology – from fun and the daily pleasure to getting in a state of flow, and the rewarding feeling of living a meaningful life and doing meaningful things – guided the discussions about the social desirability.