This book investigates three sets of questions raised by the economic downturn, corresponding to the three sections of the book. The first concerns issues of ethics and social responsibility in economic policymaking and in business and finance; how the costs of the downturn have fallen within the...

Although there has been little economic research on 'ethical consumption' in a general sense, work on its various aspects is growing. This paper reviews economic research on ethical consumption, examining both demand-and supply-side aspects. It is argued that the most promising way to see...

In considering whether asset-price bubbles should be offset through policy, an important issue is who pays the price when the bubble bursts. A bust that reduces the wealth of well-off households only may have small welfare costs, but costs may be sizable if broad swaths of households are...

After the bursting of the housing-price bubble in 2006 and ensuing financial crisis, there has been much discussion of what economists could have done differently to help avert the crisis and "Great Recession" that followed. One dimension of this concerns information supplied by economists to...

Debt-financed consumption sprees can be socially costly. Easy access to credit can push economic activity above sustainable levels, eventually requiring cutbacks in spending, lay-offs from over-grown sectors, and write-downs of bad debts. This paper investigates problems of over-borrowing,...

To help understand what enhances the prospects for heterodox work to have strong research impact, this article analyzes the pool of articles published in the "Review of Social Economy" in the past 15 years, aiming to identify what differentiates well-cited articles from others. Well-cited papers...

Recent economic literature puts forth “behavioral†perspectives on self-control as a means of understanding oddities of consumer behavior: spending too much, saving too little, borrowing too much on costly credit cards. This article argues that the behavioral emphasis on cognition...

There has been much discussion of what economists could have done differently to help avert the 2007 financial crisis and "Great Recession" that followed. One issue concerns information supplied by economists to the general public about causes of high appreciation in home prices and their likely...

Qualitative research in economics has traditionally been unimportant compared to quantitative work. Yet there has been a small explosion in use of quantitative approaches in the past 10–15 years, including ‘mixed-methods’ projects which use qualitative and quantitative methods in...

As this comprehensive Companion demonstrates, social economics is a dynamic and growing field that emphasizes the key role that values play in the economy and in economic life. Social economics treats the economy and economics as being embedded in the larger web of social and ethical...