Are Political Economists Selfish and Indoctrinated? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Bruno Frey and Stephan Meier

Economic Inquiry, 2003, vol. 41, issue 3, 448-462

Abstract: Most professional economists believe that economists in general are more selfish than other people and that this increased selfishness is due to economics education. This article offers empirical evidence against this widely held belief. Using a unique data set about giving behavior in connection with two social funds at the University of Zurich, it is shown that economics education does not make people act more selfishly. Rather, this natural experiment suggests that the particular behavior of economists can be explained by a selection effect. (JEL A13, A20, H41) Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

JEL-codes: A13 A20 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (125)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ei/cbg020 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Are political economists selfish and indoctrinated? Evidence from a natural experiment (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:41:y:2003:i:3:p:448-462

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Preston McAfee

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().