Wu Co-Authors Article on Adding “Happiness” to Economics Courses

Stephen Wu, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, is a co-author of a recently-published paper focused on ways to incorporate the study of happiness and other measures of subjective well-being into undergraduate economics courses. “Teaching happiness (economics) in your dismal-science courses” was published in The Journal of Economic Education, from Taylor & Francis, in January.

The paper identifies ways students’ feelings about their own lives could make economics more engaging, relevant, and meaningful, and provides examples of ways happiness research might be used in teaching economics – from introductory to advanced level courses – and in various types of courses, such as behavioral, experimental, and public economics.

Wu and his fellow researchers, Kristen B. Cooper (Gordon College, UCLA), Ori Heffetz (Cornell University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem), John Ifcher (Santa Clara University), and Ekaterina Oparina (London School of Economics), concluded that “incorporating happiness economics topics into economics courses is easy and rewarding,” and that their article illustrates how “well-being applications can be taught to students in various courses and at different stages of their degree.”