Not guilty? Another look at the nature and nurture of economics students

• Published in: European journal of law and economics Vol. 29; no. 2; pp. 239 - 254
• Main Authors: Haucap, Justus, Just, Tobias
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-04-2010; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Allocations; Armed forces; Attitudes; Colleges & universities; Commercial Law; Cooperation; Economic theory; Economics; Economics and Finance; Economics education; Economists; European Integration; Hypotheses; Indoctrination; Law and Economics; Learning; Military; Price rises; Public Finance; Resource allocation; Soldiers; Student attitudes; Students; Studies; Surveys; Teaching; Values; Germany; Learning; D63; A12; A13; Selection; Attitudes; Economists; Fairness; A20
• ISSN: 0929-1261; 1572-9990; 1572-9346
• DOI: 10.1007/s10657-009-9119-5

In this paper, we re-examine students’ attitudes towards various allocation mechanisms for a scarce resource. For this purpose, we have run a survey among officers of the German military who are enrolled in different courses of study (such as economics) at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces. We find that significantly more students who are enrolled in economics courses judge price increases as fair than students enrolled in other courses. Moreover, this tendency strengthens the more training in economics the students receive. In addition, fewer students with advanced economic education judge allocation through the local community as fair when compared to first-year students in economics courses or other students. These results stand in contrast to results obtained by Frey et al. (J Econ Educ, 24:271–281,
1993
) on the same survey. In summary, we find evidence for both nature
and
nurture effects.