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Teaching happiness (economics) in your dismal-science courses

Kristen Cooper, Ori Heffetz, John Ifcher, Ekaterina Oparina and Stephen Wu


The authors of this article discuss ideas for incorporating the study of happiness and other measures of self-reported or subjective well-being (SWB) into undergraduate economics courses. They begin by motivating why economics students would benefit from learning about SWB, and then proceed to provide examples of ways to introduce this topic into different parts of the curriculum: macroeconomics, microeconomics, and upper-division electives.


24 January 2026


The Journal of Economic Education 57(2) 2026


DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2026.2613843

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220485.2026.2613843