Bankers may be unhappy at all the recent criticism and most are certainly unhappy about the random bonus taxes. But that might not be the full extent of the misery. Some of the focus at Davos intends to investigate further.

Bloomberg: Bankers created “negative value” with innovations such as mortgages that homeowners couldn’t afford, said Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, who is speaking today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on the economics of happiness.

“Most people try to see what they do as having intrinsic worth,” said Stiglitz, 66, a professor of economics at Columbia University in New York. “The fact that there’s no evidence doesn’t bother them. If you keep it to a high-level discussion, you don’t have to look at the gizzards of what you actually did, and you can feel better about yourself.”

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But all that might be changing, the age old question of whether a being richer makes you happier is due for discussion at the ‘economics of happiness’ dinner. More specifically, the question of whether bigger bonuses can make bankers happier. Nigel Nicholson, a professor at the London Business School and a psychologist who advises banks on motivational techniques thinks that the tide might be turning:

“This is a demoralized profession, where bankers are seeing themselves as stigmatized,”  “It’s gotten to a point where they don’t really want their kids going off to school saying, ‘Yeah, my dad’s a banker.’”

Still, it probably beats them telling their classmates ‘Yeah, my dad’s a motorway services cloakroom attendant’. So, the jury’s out.