Happiness economics is a branch in behavioral economics, where it explores the economics factors and consequences of happy humans. What makes people happier, and what benefits do we get when people are happier? This dossier introduces you to the field of happiness economics, from a review of economic factors proposed to influence people’s happiness, to a discussion of the economic consequences of happiness, and concludes with economic policy implications of happiness economics.

As seen with the United Nations significant promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the past few years, the issue of global development is of growing concern to many international organizations. As humanity continues to become more interconnected through globalization, the inequalities and injustices experienced by inhabitants of impacted countries becomes increasingly clear. While this issue can be observed in the papers of different types (e.g., different schools of thought) of economists throughout the world, the work of behavioral and complexity economists offer a unique, collaborative perspective on how to frame decisions for individuals in a way that can positively reverberate throughout society and throughout time.

Die ökonomische Theorie hat mit Moral wenig oder gar nichts zu tun. In den gängigen Lehrbüchern der Mikroökonomie findet sich in den Stichwortverzeichnissen kein Eintrag zu Moral oder Ethik. Die Studierenden lernen über die Wirtschaft nachzudenken, aber sie lernen dabei nicht, systematisch über ethische Fragen zu reflektieren. Nach der neoklassischen Lehre, wie sie in den Lehrbüchern präsentiert wird, weist wirtschaftliches Handeln nicht grundsätzlich moralische Aspekte auf.

This paper presents an overview of different models which explain financial crises, with the aim of understanding economic developments during and possibly after the Great Recession. In the first part approaches based on efficient markets and rational expectations hypotheses are analyzed, which however do not give any explanation for the occurrence of financial crises and thus cannot suggest any remedies for the present situation. A broad range of theoretical approaches analyzing financial crises from a medium term perspective is then discussed. Within this group we focused on the insights of Marx, Schumpeter, Wicksell, Hayek, Fisher, Keynes, Minsky, and Kindleberger. Subsequently the contributions of the Regulation School, the approach of Social Structures of Accumulation and Post-Keynesian approach, which focus on long-term developments and regime shifts in capitalist development, are presented. International approaches to finance and financial crises are integrated into the analyses. We address the issue of relevance of all these theories for the present crisis and draw some policy implications. The paper has the aim to find out to which extent the different approaches are able to explain the Great Recession, what visions they develop about future development of capitalism and to which extent these different approaches can be synthesized.

Banner and Pastor debunk granted assumptions of the neoclassical theory, such as self-interested human behavior, the necessity of inequality and growth, to pull the threads between the new possible foundations of our society, "prosperity, security and community".

This content submission has two parts: (1) a link to the post by Wolf Richter on deterioration of US subprime credit card debt and loans, driven in part by the overuse of hedonic quality adjustments in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) used by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and (2) to introduce Exploring Economics to the website Naked Capitalism, which is an effort to promote critical thinking through the medium of a finance and economics blog and fearless commentary.