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Over the last decades, several authors emphasized the individualistic approach followed by economists and their students. In particular, there is the possibility that undergraduates who major in economics would be more likely to free ride or defect from coalitions in collective action situations.
The main goal of this paper is to test the hypothesis that economics students tend to provide inferior amounts of voluntary donations to public goods provisions in a controlled environment.
Carter and Irons (1991) explore the robustness of Marwell and Ames’ (1981) original study by implementing a simple ultimatum bargaining game experiment to test whether economics students behave in accordance with the predictions of rational choice models. They find that economics students, when playing the role of ‘responders’ in ultimatum games, tend to accept less money offers, while they keep more when playing the role of ‘proposers’.
In doing so, we report the results of laboratory experiments performed in a business school, involving students majoring in accounting, business administration and economics.
The results obtained suggest that, contrarily to most experimental studies, subjects who major in economics tend to cooperate more and free ride less than non-majors. We also find a result where senior economics students cooperate more than freshmen, indicating that exposure to economic concepts does not hinder cooperation.
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