This paper opens up with some issues which are fundamentally relevant to how Happiness Economics
studies are presently conducted, and then sets out to show that for prominent neoclassical authors W. S. Jevons and F. Y.
Edgeworth the object of Economics was to maximise happiness and that, in this, they coincide with current economists
working in this research area. We show that the interest in happiness is not new but leans on a significant economic
tradition linked to the Utilitarian philosophy that dates to the second half of the 19th century
