Isolating nature from nurture: Does exposure to business and economics education make students more selfinterested?

Abstract

Does exposure to business and economics education make students more self-interested and less interested in a career that would contribute to a better society? Using a panel dataset of more than 900 individuals from a European Business School we are able to isolate the role of self-selection from possible education or nurture-effects on prosocial (altruistic) values and attitudes associated with exposure to business and economics education. The school in this study, as well as many other contemporary business schools in this part of the world, have for many years integrated issues of sustainability, responsibility and ethics into their business and economics education. Still, after all these efforts, our results indicate that business and economics students become significantly less prosocial during their program studies, and importantly, we find no such effect among students from other disciplines. Further, we find that prosocial attitudes significantly correlate with prosocial behavior (measured by donation in an incentivized charity dictator game). We also provide evidence for highly heterogeneous effects with regards to majors (accounting, management, finance, economics etc.). Finally, we find notable and significant gender differences that largely persist throughout university education.