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Does the Field of Study Influence Students' Political Attitudes?

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  • Potrafke, Niklas
  • Fischer, Mira
  • Ursprung, Heinrich

Abstract

We investigate whether the field of study influences university students’ political attitudes. To disentangle self-selection from learning effects, we first investigate whether the fields of study chosen by the incoming students correlate with their political attitudes. In a second step we explore how the political attitudes change as the students progress in their studies. Our results are based on a German pseudo-panel survey, the sample size of which exceeds that of comparable student surveys by an order of magnitude. We find systematic differences between the students’ political attitudes across eight fields of study. These differences can in most cases be attributed to self-selection. A notable exception is economics. Even though self-selection is also important, training in economics has an unambiguous influence on the political attitudes: by the time of graduation, economics students are about 6.2 percentage points more likely than they were as freshmen to agree with liberal-democratic policy positions.
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Suggested Citation

  • Potrafke, Niklas & Fischer, Mira & Ursprung, Heinrich, 2013. "Does the Field of Study Influence Students' Political Attitudes?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79934, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79934
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    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Klaus Gründler & Niklas Potrafke & Timo Wochner, 2020. "Structural Reforms and Income Inequality: Who Benefits From Market-Oriented Reforms?," EconPol Policy Reports 18, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    3. Coelho Junior, Francisco Antonio & Hedler, Helga & Faiad, Cristiane & Marques-Quinteiro, Pedro, 2020. "Determinants of political behavior and the role of technology in the classroom: An empirical investigation in Brazil," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    4. Tatiana Litvinova & Olga Vershinina & Gennady Moskvitin, 2020. "Social and Political Attitudes of Moscow Students on the Background of the All-Russia and Regional Youth Studies," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-18, September.
    5. Jussila Hammes , Johanna, 2017. "The impact of career concerns and cognitive dissonance on bureaucrats’ use of cost-benefit analysis," Working papers in Transport Economics 2017:5, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI).
    6. Kauder, Björn & Potrafke, Niklas & Ursprung, Heinrich, 2018. "Behavioral determinants of proclaimed support for environment protection policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 26-41.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • A22 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Undergraduate
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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