scholarly journals Educated or Indoctrinated? Remarks on the Influence of Economic Teaching on Students’ Attitudes Based on Evidence from the Public Good Game Experiment

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-371
Author(s):  
Joanna Dzionek-Kozłowska ◽  
Jarosław Neneman
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Economic Education ◽  
Bachelor's Degree ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
Common Fund ◽  
The Common ◽  
Exam Scores ◽  
Students Attitudes

Abstract Economic education is frequently blamed for negatively affecting students’ values and attitudes. Economists are reported as less cooperative, more self-interested, and more prone to free-riding. However, empirical evidence is inconclusive – certain studies support while others gainsay the so-called indoctrination hypothesis. We contribute to the discussion by running a Public Good Game (PGG) quasi-experiment. Working with economics and non-economics graduates (N = 206), we compared contributions to the common fund by representatives of both subsamples. Students’ contributions were then juxtaposed against the scores they achieved from the exam items, testing their command of game theory to detect the supposed influence of economic teaching. We hypothesised that holders of a bachelor’s degree in economics and management would contribute less to finance the common good. We also expected that those whose exam scores were higher would donate less to the common fund in the PGG. Contrary to expectations and prior empirical evidence, students holding a bachelor’s degree in economics and management made higher contributions to the common fund than their non-economics counterparts. Also, we found no correlation between the level of donations and exam scores. We conclude that there are no grounds for considering economic teaching as promoting uncooperativeness and exerting the supposed harmful influence on students’ character. We claim that economic departments provide education rather than indoctrination.

scholarly journals Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (103) ◽  
pp. 20141203 ◽  
Author(s):  
The Anh Han ◽  
Luís Moniz Pereira ◽  
Tom Lenaerts
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Full Agreement ◽  
Group Interactions ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Public Goods Games ◽  
The Common ◽  
Strategic Solution

When creating a public good, strategies or mechanisms are required to handle defectors. We first show mathematically and numerically that prior agreements with posterior compensations provide a strategic solution that leads to substantial levels of cooperation in the context of public goods games, results that are corroborated by available experimental data. Notwithstanding this success, one cannot, as with other approaches, fully exclude the presence of defectors, raising the question of how they can be dealt with to avoid the demise of the common good. We show that both avoiding creation of the common good, whenever full agreement is not reached, and limiting the benefit that disagreeing defectors can acquire, using costly restriction mechanisms, are relevant choices. Nonetheless, restriction mechanisms are found the more favourable, especially in larger group interactions. Given decreasing restriction costs, introducing restraining measures to cope with public goods free-riding issues is the ultimate advantageous solution for all participants, rather than avoiding its creation.

Making ‘Science as a Public Good’ Meaningful

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 70-73
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Knowledge System ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Reliable Knowledge

I respond to the challenging comments of Nico Stehr, Stephen Turner and Raphael Sassower to my own article on the sense in which science can be regarded as a ‘public good’. I agree with Stehr that this conceptualization brings various hazards that are exacerbated with increasing democratization of the knowledge system. Here I elaborate on an astute remark he raises from Georg Simmel. Based on a historically well informed account, Turner takes a more ‘demystified’ view of science as a public good, ultimately seeing it as corresponding to John Ziman’s idea of ‘reliable knowledge’. For his part, Sassower pursues a more ‘transcendental’ approach about knowledge being in the ‘common good’, while admitting that it is an aspiration rather than a reality.

The Rise of Flourishing Societies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Good Problem

This chapter explains how societies can climb a development ladder whereby each step leads to a larger set of transactions through which to increase the value of output per capita. Each step higher is harder because each step adds transactions that require higher levels of social trust. The problem is that many of the benefits of climbing the ladder are realized at the level of society as a whole, so individual adults and individual parents have much to gain by conserving on their own resources while allowing everyone else in society to invest into the inculcation of the required moral beliefs to produce a high-trust society. There is a public good problem associated with investing enough to best promote the common good. This problem is particularly daunting for the kind of moral beliefs required to produce trustworthy individuals and it worsens with societal success.

scholarly journals Public Sector Software, Participatory Communications and Social Change

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (Special-Issue) ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Ninan Thomas Pradip
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Free Open Source Software ◽  
Indian State ◽  
The Common ◽  
State Investment ◽  
Free Open Source

Abstract This article explores the role played by public sector software (PSS) in social change in India. Viewing public sector software as a public good, it explores its potential as well as the challenges that it faces in a context in which proprietoral software is an established and dominant force. Using both theory and examples, it argues that state investment in this public good makes infinite sense in the context of e-governance and commitments to access and affordable use of information resources for all its citizens. Based on the principles of Free Open Source Software (FOSS), PSS offers not only possibilities of access but also adaptation and use by a variety of ‘recursive publics’. Using the example of PSS in the Southern Indian state of Kerala, it offers insights into the practical benefits of software deployed for the common good.

scholarly journals Cooperation and the common good

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1687) ◽  
pp. 20150086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rufus A. Johnstone ◽  
António M. M. Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marginal Costs ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Returns On Investment

In this paper, we draw the attention of biologists to a result from the economic literature, which suggests that when individuals are engaged in a communal activity of benefit to all, selection may favour cooperative sharing of resources even among non-relatives. Provided that group members all invest some resources in the public good, they should refrain from conflict over the division of these resources. The reason is that, given diminishing returns on investment in public and private goods, claiming (or ceding) a greater share of total resources only leads to the actor (or its competitors) investing more in the public good, such that the marginal costs and benefits of investment remain in balance. This cancels out any individual benefits of resource competition. We illustrate how this idea may be applied in the context of biparental care, using a sequential game in which parents first compete with one another over resources, and then choose how to allocate the resources they each obtain to care of their joint young (public good) versus their own survival and future reproductive success (private good). We show that when the two parents both invest in care to some extent, they should refrain from any conflict over the division of resources. The same effect can also support asymmetric outcomes in which one parent competes for resources and invests in care, whereas the other does not invest but refrains from competition. The fact that the caring parent gains higher fitness pay-offs at these equilibria suggests that abandoning a partner is not always to the latter's detriment, when the potential for resource competition is taken into account, but may instead be of benefit to the ‘abandoned’ mate.

Must Democracy Be Reasonable?

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Christiano
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moral Debate ◽  
The Common

Democratic theorists stress the importance of free and equal discussion and debate in a well-functioning democratic process. In this process, citizens attempt to persuade each other to support legislation by appealing to considerations of justice, liberty or the common good and are open to changing their minds when hearing the arguments of others. They are concerned to ground policy and legislation on the most defensible considerations of morality and the best empirical evidence. To be sure, majority rule remains important in democratic decision making because of the persistence of disagreement. But many have argued that debates over legislation that appeal to moral considerations ought to be given a much larger place in our understanding of the ideals of democracy than theorists have given them in the past. This emphasis on the importance of moral debate and discussion in democracy is characteristic of what I call the wide view of deliberative democracy.

On everyday academic research

2017 ◽  
pp. 98-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Tirole
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Quality ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
The Common ◽  
Verification Of Models ◽  
Science And Research

In the fourth chapter of the book “The economy of the common good”, the nature of economics as a science and research practices in their theoretical and empirical aspects are discussed. The author considers the processes of modeling, empirical verification of models and evaluation of research quality. In addition, the features of economic cognition and the role of mathematics in economic research are analyzed, including the example of relevant research in game theory and information theory.

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