View article

If you ask a chef, a physician, or a teacher the question:“Is more always better,” they will probably answer:" No". Of course, it depends on the dish you are cooking, the illness you are curing, and the subject you are teaching. But these professionals know when additional ingredients spoil the dish, additional treatment harms the patient, and additional learning material frustrates the student. If you put the same question to an economist or a consumer, though, it is less clear what the answer will be.

Nowadays, consumers seem to have an insatiable desire for more and more goods and services. Economists typically equate more consumption with greater well-being. And growth has become a leading commercial and political imperative. As a consequence, Frank and Cook (1995) have described advanced societies as" winner-take-all-societies" in which a few superstars are paid handsomely, and others are seduced into mimicking their grand lifestyles (Frank and Cook 1995). In this environment, maximization of consumption has become the hallmark of success. More is universally taken to mean better, but here we ask whether more actually makes people happier.