This special issue contains five articles on the subject of living standards and well-being, important topics in social economics. The authors assess the so-called squirrel cage of work-and-spend, and the culture of overconsumption in the USA and other industrialized countries. They evaluate...

This address presents a vision of economics—drawing upon social, institutional, and feminist economics—that supports the assertion that there should be social responsibility for living standards. Alternative definitions of what an economy is and what economics should study are related to...

To avow that gender is more than an independent--or dummy--variable is to posit the centrality of gender (as well as race and class) in economic analysis. Conventional economic methods tend to neglect the process by which gender interacts with and shapes other social forces and institutions. The...

Policy initiatives providing for alternative working time arrangements as well as a shortened standard work week have become prevalent in recent years, especially among the highly industrialized countries of northern Europe. We find that despite institutional differences, Germany, France, and...

How do social economists conceptualize and analyze time, particularly time spent in paid employment? In this symposium regarding this quite “timely”" issue, it is evident that social economics views work time as something more than its presentation in neoclassical economics. For neoclassical...

The transition process in Russia and Eastern Europe was dominated in the literature and in policy making by the shock therapy process. However, shock therapy was short-lived. Governments that implemented shock therapy were not able to sustain the reform program since they lost power after the...