Are political economists selfish and indoctrinated? Evidence from a natural experiment

Bruno Frey and Stephan Meier

Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website

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.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (118)

Downloads: (external link)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00242.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: 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:feb:natura:00242

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Natural Field Experiments from The Field Experiments Website
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Francesca Pagnotta ().