World's Happiest Places - Forbes.com
World's Happiest Places
Lauren Sherman,
05.05.09, 06:00 PM EDT
A new report reveals where people feel most positive about their lives.
Excerpts:
In Depth: World's Happiest Places
Where in the world do people feel most content with their lives?
According to a new report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based group of 30 countries with democratic governments that provides economic and social statistics and data, happiness levels are highest in northern European countries.
Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands rated at the top of the list, ranking first, second and third, respectively. Outside Europe, New Zealand and Canada landed at Nos. 8 and 6, respectively. The U.S. did not crack the top 10. Switzerland placed seventh and Belgium placed tenth.
The report looked at subjective well-being, defined as life satisfaction. Did people feel like their lives were dominated by positive experiences and feelings, or negative ones?
To answer that question, the OECD used data from a Gallup World Poll conducted in 140 countries around the world last year. The poll asked respondents whether they had experienced six different forms of positive or negative feelings within the last day.
Some sample questions: Did you enjoy something you did yesterday? Were you proud of something you did yesterday? Did you learn something yesterday? Were you treated with respect yesterday? In each country, a representative sample of no more than 1,000 people, age 15 or older, were surveyed. The poll was scored numerically on a scale of 1-100. The average score was 62.4.
While the global economic crisis has taken a toll on every nation, the countries that scored at the top still boast some of the highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. Denmark, which got the highest score, is not only a wealthy country, it's also highly productive, with a 2009 GDP per capita of $68,000, according to the International Monetary Fund. The United States' GDP per capita, by contrast, is $47,335. Though the U.S. got an above-average score of 74, it did not break the top 10.
Wealth alone does not bring the greatest degree of happiness. Norway has the highest GDP per capita on the list--$98,822--yet it ranked ninth, not first. On the other hand, New Zealand's happiness level is 76.7 out of 100 on the OECD list, but its 2009 GDP per capita is just $30,556.
According to a 2005 editorial, published in the British Medical Journal and authored by Dr. Tony Delamothe, research done in Mexico, Ghana, Sweden, the U.S. and the U.K. shows that individuals typically get richer during their lifetimes, but not happier. It is family, social and community networks that bring joy to one's life, according to Delamothe.
Read Full Article: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/world-happiest-places-lifestyle-travel-world-happiest.html?partner=executive_picks_newsletter
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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Delaware Supreme Court Overturns Ryan v. Lyondell and Provides Some Comfort to Boards of Directors, May 2009
http://www.blakes.com/english/legal_updates/mergers_aquisitions/may_2009/Alert221-DSC_Comfort.pdf
Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP
Michael Gans and Lindsay Bunt
May 2009
Delaware Supreme Court Overturns Ryan v. Lyondell and Provides Some Comfort to Boards of Directors
Michael Gans and Lindsay Bunt >
Excerpts:
In July 2008, the Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed a summary judgment motion by the directors of Lyondell Chemicals, an independent chemical manufacturer, to dismiss shareholder litigation asserting that they had not met their fiduciary duty in recommending the sale of Lyondell to Basell AF at a 45% premium over the pre-announcement share price. In a decision that will provide comfort to Delaware directors, the Delaware Supreme Court recently overturned the lower court’s dismissal and granted the Lyondell directors the summary motion they sought.>
While Delaware jurisprudence on directors’ duty of loyalty (or fiduciary duty) is arguably now less relevant in Canada in light of the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) guidance in BCE Inc., the reversal of the lower court decision in Ryan v. Lyondell confirms that (i) as in Canada, Delaware directors who are diligent and informed will be afforded a high level of judicial deference even if their processes, when viewed in hindsight, may have been imperfect, and (ii) a high bar is required to establish a breach of the duty of loyalty where a board is independent and disinterested with regard to a particular transaction.>
Read Full Article: http://www.blakes.com/english/legal_updates/mergers_aquisitions/may_2009/Alert221-DSC_Comfort.pdf
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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP
Michael Gans and Lindsay Bunt
May 2009
Delaware Supreme Court Overturns Ryan v. Lyondell and Provides Some Comfort to Boards of Directors
Michael Gans and Lindsay Bunt >
Excerpts:
In July 2008, the Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed a summary judgment motion by the directors of Lyondell Chemicals, an independent chemical manufacturer, to dismiss shareholder litigation asserting that they had not met their fiduciary duty in recommending the sale of Lyondell to Basell AF at a 45% premium over the pre-announcement share price. In a decision that will provide comfort to Delaware directors, the Delaware Supreme Court recently overturned the lower court’s dismissal and granted the Lyondell directors the summary motion they sought.>
While Delaware jurisprudence on directors’ duty of loyalty (or fiduciary duty) is arguably now less relevant in Canada in light of the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) guidance in BCE Inc., the reversal of the lower court decision in Ryan v. Lyondell confirms that (i) as in Canada, Delaware directors who are diligent and informed will be afforded a high level of judicial deference even if their processes, when viewed in hindsight, may have been imperfect, and (ii) a high bar is required to establish a breach of the duty of loyalty where a board is independent and disinterested with regard to a particular transaction.>
Read Full Article: http://www.blakes.com/english/legal_updates/mergers_aquisitions/may_2009/Alert221-DSC_Comfort.pdf
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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
"Synthetic Happiness" - Every Bit As Real And Enduring As "Natural Happiness" Which Is The Happiness We Stumble Upon - Daniel Gilbert, Harvard
Note From Jim: Funny, intriguing, and most importantly good for you.... Create your own "Synthetic Happiness".... It's as real and enduring as "Natural Happiness", which by definition is the type of happiness that one just happens to stumble upon.
Video, Daniel Gilbert, Ph.D, Professor or Psychology - TED 21 minutes http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
Why are we happy? Filmed Feb 2004
About this talk Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned.
About Dan Gilbert Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and... Full <http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/dan_gilbert.html> bio and more links
Why you should listen to him: Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.
The premise of his current research -- that our assumptions about what will make us happy are often wrong -- is supported with clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. But his delivery is what sets him apart. His engaging -- and often hilarious -- style pokes fun at typical human behavior and invokes pop-culture references everyone can relate to. This winning style translates also to Gilbert’s writing, which is lucid, approachable and laugh-out-loud funny. The immensely readable Stumbling on Happiness, published in 2006, became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages.
In fact, the title of his book could be drawn from his own life. At 19, he was a high school dropout with dreams of writing science fiction. When a creative writing class at his community college was full, he enrolled in the only available course: psychology. He found his passion there, earned a doctorate in social psychology in 1985 at Princeton, and has since won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Phi Beta Kappa teaching prize for his work at Harvard. He has written essays and articles for The New York Times, Time and even Starbucks, while continuing his research into happiness at his Hedonic Psychology Laboratory."Gilbert's elbow-in-the-ribs social-science humor is actually funny. ... But underneath the goofball brilliance, [he] has a serious argument to make about why human beings are forever wrongly predicting what will make them happy."New York Times Book
Watch Full Video: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
***********************************************************************
This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Video, Daniel Gilbert, Ph.D, Professor or Psychology - TED 21 minutes http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
Why are we happy? Filmed Feb 2004
About this talk Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned.
About Dan Gilbert Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and... Full <http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/dan_gilbert.html> bio and more links
Why you should listen to him: Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.
The premise of his current research -- that our assumptions about what will make us happy are often wrong -- is supported with clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. But his delivery is what sets him apart. His engaging -- and often hilarious -- style pokes fun at typical human behavior and invokes pop-culture references everyone can relate to. This winning style translates also to Gilbert’s writing, which is lucid, approachable and laugh-out-loud funny. The immensely readable Stumbling on Happiness, published in 2006, became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages.
In fact, the title of his book could be drawn from his own life. At 19, he was a high school dropout with dreams of writing science fiction. When a creative writing class at his community college was full, he enrolled in the only available course: psychology. He found his passion there, earned a doctorate in social psychology in 1985 at Princeton, and has since won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Phi Beta Kappa teaching prize for his work at Harvard. He has written essays and articles for The New York Times, Time and even Starbucks, while continuing his research into happiness at his Hedonic Psychology Laboratory."Gilbert's elbow-in-the-ribs social-science humor is actually funny. ... But underneath the goofball brilliance, [he] has a serious argument to make about why human beings are forever wrongly predicting what will make them happy."New York Times Book
Watch Full Video: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
***********************************************************************
This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
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