Graduation Year
2023
Date of Submission
12-2022
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Economics
Second Department
Philosophy
Reader 1
Julio Garin
Reader 2
Adrienne Martin
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2022 Hannah Doyle
Abstract
There is a growing body of literature on Buddhist economics from a philosophical perspective; however, no work to date has sought to empirically validate it as an effective economic theory at a global scale. In my paper, I draw on the long history of Buddhist metaphysics to construct an account of Buddhist ethics and then proceed to derive a set of Buddhist economic principles. I draw on the World Happiness Report’s methodology to quantitatively demonstrate the relationship between Buddhist economic principles and the psychological wellbeing of a country’s citizens, as measured through their own evaluation of their quality of life and the dispersion of those evaluations within a given country. Overall, I find that the implementation of Buddhist economic principles at a national government level is positively correlated with higher average levels of wellbeing and lower dispersion of life evaluations. However, I also find significant differences between how Buddhist principles affect wellbeing between countries with initial higher and lower rates of wellbeing dispersion.
Recommended Citation
Doyle, Hannah, "A Philosophical and Empirical Investigation into Buddhist Economics" (2023). CMC Senior Theses. 3117.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/3117
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