Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?
Abstract
In this paper we investigate whether exposure to the self-interest model commonly used in economics alters the extent to which people behave in self-interested ways. First, we report the results of several empirical studies—some our own, some by others—that suggest economists behave in more self-interested ways. By itself, this evidence does not demonstrate that exposure to the self-interest model causes more self-interested behavior, since it may be that economists were simply more self-interested to begin with, and this difference was one reason they chose to study economics. Second, we present preliminary evidence that exposure to the self-interest model does in fact encourage self-interested behavior.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Article provided by American Economic Association in its journal Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Volume (Year): 7 (1993)
Issue (Month): 2 (Spring)
Pages: 159-171
Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.7.2.159
Contact details of provider:
Email:
Web page: http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/
More information through EDIRC
Order Information:
Web: http://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html
Related research
Keywords:Find related papers by JEL classification:
- A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
- A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Blog mentions
As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:- Is Economics the Problem?
by James Kwak in the baseline scenario on 2011-02-18 13:00:25 - 660. Psychology of money
by admin in Reflections on Gardenworld Politics on 2011-02-19 03:19:56
Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:7:y:1993:i:2:p:159-71For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jane Voros) or (Michael P. Albert).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

