Trade Openness and Happiness in Selected Developing Countries

Achieving a happy society is one of the goals of today's human societies, and how to achieve it has attracted the attention of many researchers and politicians. In this research, one of the dimensions of this important issue has been studied. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the degree of trade openness and happiness in selected developing countries in the period of 2002-2007 by the GMM panel method. The results of model estimation have shown that the degree of trade openness has a nonlinear and threshold effect like Inverse-U shape on happiness. The reasons for this result can be attributed to the diversity of consumer products and thus increasing consumer utility and satisfaction in the early stages of economic opening and then by expanding the degree of trade openness and crossing the threshold level, the negative impact of the degree of openness on happiness can be attributed to issues such as increasing income inequality, differences in expected and realized happiness, and the effects of globalization on informal institutions.