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Selected Publications

Teaching happiness (economics) in your dismal-science courses

Kristen B. Cooper, Ori Heffetz, John Ifcher, Ekaterina Oparina, and Stephen Wue

The Journal of Economic Education 57 (2) pp. 182–196, 2026

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Abstract

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.

LSB Research, ECON, 2026, John Ifcher