The concept of "utility" is often used in ambiguous ways in economics, from having substantive psychological connotations to being a formal placeholder representing a person's preferences. In the accounts of the early utilitarians, it was a multidimensional measure that has been condensed during...

Despite lower incomes the self-employed often report higher job satisfaction. But this increased job satisfaction only sometimes translates into higher life satisfaction, likely due to the heterogeneous nature of self-employment. By distinguishingdifferent types of self-employment, this paper...

1. Introduction -- 2. Conceptual background and welfare terminology -- 3. Other approaches to welfare economics -- 4. A positive basis : the learning theory of consumption -- 5. An evolutionary theory of welfare -- 6. Evolutionary welfare economics -- 7. Concluding remarks.