Call for Papers
Special Sessions "Happiness Economics: Moving beyond GDP to reverse the joyless economy" (organized by Dimitris Ballas, Martijn Burger, Spyridon Stavropoulos),and "Economic Geography: Regions in transformation. Development Traps, Narrative Fallacies and New Perspectives" (organized by Elli Papastergiou, Dimitris Ballas and Anastasia Panori). Deadline January 31st 2026.
These Special Sessions are part of the 10th International Conference on Applied Theory, Macro and Empirical Finance (AMEF). https://amef.uom.gr/, April 6th - 7th. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece
SS: "Happiness Economics: Moving beyond GDP to reverse the joyless economy"
It’s been half a century since Richard Easterlin introduced his famous paradox about happiness and income in his 1974 article, and Tibor Scitovsky incorporated psychological concepts and insights into economics in his seminal book ‘The Joyless Economy’ (1976). Since then, the interdisciplinary science of well-being has been expanding rapidly towards a broader understanding of social welfare and progress. Today, this approach is more relevant than ever. Societies, amidst a global polycrisis, face a range of challenges whose implications for people’s life satisfaction and happiness are poorly captured by monetary indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ecosystem degradation, the climate crisis, and resource exploitation, mental health challenges that reach epidemic levels (including depression, stress, loneliness, and burnout), and rising interpersonal, intra-urban, and inter-territorial inequalities, interact and impose a substantial human and economic cost for societies (WHO, 2025; World Economic Forum, 2025; OECD, 2024; OECD, 2025).
These intertwined challenges underline the limits of growth-oriented paradigms and the need for policy frameworks that are not only concerned with traditional economic outcomes but also account for real quality of life impacts. While advances in well-being research have produced several tools, their systematic integration into public policy and planning still lags behind across regions and spatial scales.
This call invites contributions that advance the measurement, analysis, and governance of wellbeing beyond GDP. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological work that engages with subjective well-being and its determinants, including spatial and social inequalities, urban and regional dynamics, environmental sustainability, and policy design. Submissions may draw from economics, geography, urban studies, psychology, public health, environmental sciences and related disciplines
For more info see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/elli-papastergiou-521b1186_amef2026-happiness-beyondgdp-activity-7410287336611123200-9MGa/
SS: "Economic Geography: Regions in transformation. Development Traps, Narrative Fallacies and New Perspectives"
Regions across the globe are urged to transform to keep up with an increasingly competitive development paradigm. The pace imposed by technological and economic change frequently outstrips the institutional, financial, and social capacities of regions to respond, reinforcing forms of vulnerability and uneven development. These dynamics are commonly interpreted as evidence of enduring development traps that often go hand in hand with heightened feelings of left-behindness, despair, and fatalism that translate into political discontent. At the same time, critical perspectives question whether such diagnoses reflect structural constraints or narrative constructions that shape spatial imaginaries that inform governance choices. Limited collective capacity to imagine alternative regional features restricts the emergence of new forms of development, as well as disputing or recombining of existing ones.
We invite contributions that address the conceptual, empirical, and political dimensions of regional transformation. These may include, but are not limited to:
- Left-behindness, political discontent, and regional identities
- Conceptual and empirical assessments of development traps in regional contexts
- The role of spatial imaginaries in shaping regional policy and governance
- The performative effects of development paradigms, indicators, and benchmarks
- Interactions between innovation advancements, institutional capacity, and uneven development
For more info see https://www.linkedin.com/posts/elli-papastergiou-521b1186_spatial-geography-amef2026-activity-7409190818542075904-_TM3/