Does an Economics Education Produce Technocratic Paternalists? Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

Ivar Kolstad, Arne Wiig and Odd Fjeldstad

Journal of Development Studies, 2020, vol. 56, issue 8, 1508-1522

Abstract: When confronted with information that ordinary citizens do not care that strongly about efficiency, do economists change their views of optimal public policy? In a randomised experiment on tax preferences conducted among business and economics students in Tanzania, we supplied the treatment group with information that ordinary citizens disagree with implications of efficiency-based optimal tax theory. Tax preferences were then measured using discrete choice experiments. The results show that the treated students modify their position in the direction of public opinion, an effect driven by students with longer exposure to economics. An economics education hence seems to produce professionals who are part democrats and part technocratic paternalists.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2019.1690135 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:jdevst:v:56:y:2020:i:8:p:1508-1522

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2019.1690135

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().