An observed discrepancy in the behaviour of Economics students and non-Economics ones in game theoretical experiments indicates that the former are more selfish. The prevalent explanation for this is that they are 'born economists' and thus self-select themselves into the discipline. This belief...

Following a stream of experimental results (e.g. Marwell and Ames 1981, Carter and Irons 1991, Frank et al. 1993, Yezer et al. 1996, Selten and Ockenfelds 1998, Frank and Schulze 2000, Frey and Meier 2002, Rubinstein 2006), it has become common to believe that economists are more selfish than...

The profession of academic economics has been widely criticized for being excessively dependent on technical models based on unrealistic assumptions about rationality and individual behaviour, and yet it remains a sparsely studied area. This volume presents a series of background readings on the...