The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies will host a public panel on Friday, November 13, 2009 from 2:00-4:00pm.

The panel will feature Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in person and Jean-Paul Fitoussi via videoconference from Paris. They will discuss the findings of the recent report issued by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress that was headed by Sen, Fitoussi, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

In addition, Peter Hall and Michèle Lamont will also be on the panel. Their Successful Societies program is a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)-funded program that aims to quantify the measures of societal success. The resulting book, entitled Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health, integrates recent research in an effort to answer the question of why some societies are more successful than others at promoting individual and collective well-being.

The panel will fuse together the findings of each project, and each panel member will comment on the question of what makes a good society, and how can we best achieve it. This blog will provide context and ancillary information related to the panel and to the projects that underlie it.