Abstract
Abstract Economic education is frequently blamed for negatively affecting students’ values and attitudes. Economists are reported as less cooperative, more self-interested, and more prone to free-riding. However, empirical evidence is inconclusive – certain studies support while others gainsay the so-called indoctrination hypothesis. We contribute to the discussion by running a Public Good Game (PGG) quasi-experiment. Working with economics and non-economics graduates (N = 206), we compared contributions to the common fund by representatives of both subsamples. Students’ contributions were then juxtaposed against the scores they achieved from the exam items, testing their command of game theory to detect the supposed influence of economic teaching. We hypothesised that holders of a bachelor’s degree in economics and management would contribute less to finance the common good. We also expected that those whose exam scores were higher would donate less to the common fund in the PGG. Contrary to expectations and prior empirical evidence, students holding a bachelor’s degree in economics and management made higher contributions to the common fund than their non-economics counterparts. Also, we found no correlation between the level of donations and exam scores. We conclude that there are no grounds for considering economic teaching as promoting uncooperativeness and exerting the supposed harmful influence on students’ character. We claim that economic departments provide education rather than indoctrination.
Highlights
Economics students and alumni are frequently presented as different from those who have chosen other academic majors
Closer analysis of donations contributed by members of particular subgroups revealed another interesting finding: the highest average contribution came from economics majors, whereas the humanities and art students gave the lowest sum
The average contribution left by respondents observed in the present research equalled 63% of the amount possible to donate, which supports conclusions drawn from many previous empirical studies (e.g., Marwell & Ames, 1981; Cason, Saijo & Yamato, 2002). These studies demonstrated that people usually participate in financing public goods much more than what is suggested by game theory rationales
Summary
Economics students and alumni are frequently presented as different from those who have chosen other academic majors. Working with a sample of first-year graduates holding a variety of bachelor’s degrees (N = 206) who were enrolled in a two-year master’s programme in Business Management, we scrutinised choices they made in a Public Good Game (PGG). This step let us examine whether their choices revealed “indoctrination” by their undergraduate education. For the sake of values that differ from the simple need to maximize payoffs, they would have liked to contribute more anyway These findings allow us to conclude that economic education per se is not powerful enough to significantly shake students’ morality and transform them into egoistic, uncooperative, two-legged calculating machines.
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