Why are Economists so Different? Nature, Nurture and Gender Effects in a Simple Trust Game

Andrea Müller and Justus Haucap

VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: We analyze the behavior of 577 economics and law students in a simple binary trust experiment in class-room. While economists are both significantly less trusting and less trustworthy than law students, this difference is largely due to heterogeneity between female law and economics students. While female law and economics students are already different in nature (during the first term of study), the gap between them also widens more drastically over the course of their study compared to their male counterparts. This finding is rather critical as the detailed composition of students is typically neglected in most experiments.

JEL-codes: A12 A22 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hme and nep-hpe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Working Paper: Why are economists so different? Nature, nurture, and gender effects in a simple trust game (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100554

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