With the ghost of a smile on his face

We were somewhat vaguely asked to write an entry having to do with business ethics—I have decided to shed light on the ethics of and element of business school: more precisely the indoctrination effect leading to a reduction in charitable donations by non-economics majors having attended intro and mid-level economics courses. Yoram Bauman, an economics professor at the University of Washington, in his study, tracked voluntary charitable donations by undergraduate students and compared results over time and across faculties. His hypothesis was that economics students would contribute less than other arts and sciences faculty members. What was yet to be determined was if this was due to a selection or indoctrination effect?

His conclusion was that economics majors were not affected over time; however, students with other majors sharply reduced donations if they studied intro-level economics. As he states, “Profit-maximization is a fine assumption for businesses, but a narrowly defined ‘selfish’ version of utility maximization and is neither accurate nor appropriate for modeling individual behavior.” Furthermore with numerous studies indicating that those displaying selfless behaviour are likely to progress further in their careers, and are generally happier, one must ask if economics education for non-economics majors makes individuals, and society, worse off.

Jason Molina: It Costs You Nothing

Musical inspiration for this post:

“The truth don’t hurt,
the truth don’t work,
it costs you nothing,
that’s what it was worth.”