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...

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...

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...

The use of job evaluation techniques during the Fordist period has been relatively neglected by political economists. Widely adopted in the 1940s by the large manufacturing firms that constituted the dynamic sector of industry, job evaluation helped to restructure relations between management...

We identify three implicit wage theories in U.S. debates over the principle of equal pay for equal work: wages as a living , wages as a price , and wages as a social practice . Arguments for wages as a living emphasize that the purpose of the wage is to provide an adequate level of support for...