Aristotle, who, having predated Adam Smith by 2000 years, deserves to be recognized as the world’s first economist (Solomon, 1995), distinguished between two different senses of what we call economics: oikonomikos, or household trading, which he approved of and considered essential to the working of any even slightly complex society, and chrematisike, or trade for profit, which he considered selfish and utterly devoid of virtue, calling those who engaged in such practices “parasites”. Of course, consumers do not purchase and invest for solely economic reasons (Polanyi, 1944). Interest in ethics in economics has been the subject of continuous study. In this regard, the recent financial crisis has had not only economic, but also social, psychological, political, and ethical consequences, which have impacted the financial and banking system. Consumers are no longer drawn only by the economic return but also by ethical factors. Ethical banking is on the rise. This paper aims to explain the reasons for the growth in ethical banking and to answer the following questions: can banking consumers-investors change the characterization of the banking system? Can ethical banking gain ground on traditional banking? And is ethical banking really effective? To this end, it will examine the Spanish case, using econometric causal regression models to identify the reasons why consumers decide to invest in ethical banking and determine its role in the Spanish economy.

This paper offers an in-depth examination of the behavior of necessity- and opportunity driven entrepreneurship. First, it considers their relevance to total entrepreneurial activity. It then seeks to determine which socio-cultural and economic factors affect the two types of entrepreneurship, as well as their relative importance for a sample of 32 previously selected countries during a period of expansion (2001–2008) and of crisis and recovery (2009–2016). The analyzed factors include monetary and fiscal policy instruments (economic factors) and representative variables of governance and human capital (socio-cultural ones). The findings show that both necessity- and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship largely explain the behavior of total entrepreneurial activity. They moreover show that the explanatory factors of both kinds of entrepreneurship differ depending on the business cycle phase considered. These findings will be key to proposing efficient economic policy measures to promote entrepreneurial activity and, thus, economic growth in different economies around the world.

In recent years, the slow pace of economic growth, high indebtedness, and high unemployment registered in most developed economies since 2009 have revived the debate over the “secular stagnation hypothesis” first formulated by the Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen in 1938. This return of the secular stagnation hypothesis occurred in November 2013, when Lawrence Summers postulated that the global economy was facing a scenario of low growth, low inflation, and a reduction in GDP per capita due to a chronic insufficiency of aggregate demand. The causes should be sought not only in cyclical factors associated with a long financial cycle and excessive accumulated public and private debt, but also in structural changes in the central economies in recent decades, linked to the rapid slowdown in population growth and the gradual aging of the population. Finally, other factors also depress demand, such as the progressive exhaustion of the globalization process and the consolidation of new labor models. In light of these developments, this paper’s aim is twofold: first, to perform an econometric panel-data study in order to determine the influence of each of these factors in explaining secular stagnation in recent years for the selected sample of countries; and, second, to lay out proposals for reorienting the government intervention strategies adopted since the onset of the financial crisis to promote consumption and achieve sustained growth, job creation, and poverty reduction.

This study analyzes the influence that experienced users of university resources might have as narrative sources of information for other students in the process of choosing their schools. Informative videos about the benefits of studying at the university provide a reference model. In these videos, a group of young people present their views and explain their reasons for choosing the university in which they are pursuing their degrees; the various narrators detail all the resources available. This study investigates whether the individual identifiers of these narrators (e.g., gender, age, physical appearance, nonverbal gestures such as smiling, posture) influence perceptions of the credibility of the information they provide. Among a sample of 150 students in their last year of pre-university training, the results demonstrate that the students' ability to identify with the narrators provides information and arouses emotions that inform their perceptions of reliability and therefore their consumption choices. None of these predictors appear to serve as determinants that can be generalized, but if emotional attitudes in response to narratives about the topic (i.e., the university) are positive, then they prompt a change in attitude toward that reference topic too.

The widespread use of digital technologies and the expansion of social networks has created new communication and meeting spaces where people and social and political actors connect with each other. This opens diverse spaces and possibilities for digital engagement in a more accessible, immediate, continuous, egalitarian, and personalized way. Digital technology facilitates learning, dissemination, and access to information, turning it into a means of communication and fueling the practice of critical thinking. In particular civic critical thinking practices improve the organization and effectiveness of civic networks and spaces for citizen participation, ultimately helping to produce responsible, conscious citizens. This study proposes a series of hypotheses based on the relationships between digital learning, critical thinking and civic participation, and tests them using the technique of structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS) applied to a sample of 191 primary and secondary school students. The results indicate that digital tools have a positive impact on the development of critical thinking, and this influences citizen participation, transforming people into more engaged citizens of the world with participatory attitudes and values.