Do Business Students make Good Citizens?

Business students are portrayed as behaving too egoistically. The critics call for more social responsibility and good citizenship behavior on the part of business students. We present evidence of pro-social behavior in business students. Every student at the University of Zurich has to decide each semester whether he/she wants to contribute to two social funds administrated by the University. With this large panel data set, we can analyze whether business students indeed behave less pro-socially than other students. Two specific hypotheses are tested: do students select into business studies or does the training in business studies indoctrinate students in a negative way? The evidence suggests that there may be a selection effect going on. Therefore, economics education does not change the citizenship behavior of business students.