Do business and economics studies erode prosocial values?

Mattias Sundemo and Åsa Löfgren

Southern Economic Journal, 2025, vol. 92, issue 2, 504-526

Abstract: Does exposure to business and economics education make students less prosocial and more selfish? Employing a difference‐in‐difference strategy with panel‐data from three subsequent cohorts of students enrolled in a Business and Economics bachelor's program (>900 students), we find that business and economics students become less prosocial over time relative to a control group of comparable students. Importantly, younger students appear to be significantly more malleable with respect to their to prosocial values. Furthermore, we observe heterogeneous effects across majors such as accounting, finance, and economics. Our research demonstrates a strong correlation between prosocial values and generous behavior.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12765

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:wly:soecon:v:92:y:2025:i:2:p:504-526

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Southern Economic Journal from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().