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on Sociology of Economics |
| By: | Javdani, Mohsen (Simon Fraser University); Chang, Ha-Joon (SOAS University of London) |
| Abstract: | This study contributes to the growing debate over the narrow ideological discourse in economics education and calls for greater pluralism. Using a randomized controlled experiment with 2, 735 economics students from 10 countries, we examine how authority and ideological biases—shaped by mainstream training—affect students’ evaluations of economic statements. When source attributions are randomly switched from mainstream to non-mainstream or removed, agreement levels drop significantly, suggesting that students rely more on the perceived authority and ideological alignment of sources than on the content itself. These biases intensify with academic progression: PhD students show the strongest effects, despite being the most likely to claim they judge arguments on substance alone. Political orientation further amplifies these patterns, particularly among right-leaning students, and significant gender differences emerge, with male students showing stronger bias toward mainstream sources. Our findings highlight how ideology and authority shape economic training, limiting students' critical engagement and reinforcing a narrow intellectual framework. |
| Keywords: | economics education, economics students, authority bias, ideological bias, ideology, plurality in economics |
| JEL: | A11 A12 A13 C93 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17891 |
| By: | Davis, John B. (Department of Economics Marquette University); (Department of Economics Marquette University) |
| Abstract: | This paper, originally a presentation at the 2024 World Congress of Social Economics Summer School at University of Massachusetts-Boston, discusses how ethical values can be incorporated in empirical research. It identifies mainstream economics’ barriers to doing this, and shows they produce a view of the relationship between ethics and economics that excludes ethics from economics. Mainstream economics sees this relationship as interdisciplinary – an ethics and economics. I argue it should be seen as multidisciplinary – an ethics in economics. The mainstream regards ethical values as subjective assuming that there are no facts about ethical values. But there is considerable factual evidence about what people’s ethical values are. One influential source I review is the decades of accumulated survey research in the World Values Survey. The paper then discusses two ways researchers can incorporate evidence about values in their empirical work. First, drawing from Stratification economics, it shows how we can identify ethical values overlooked by the mainstream in discriminatory employment settings, and how this can stimulate search for new data and lead to new theoretical hypotheses. Second, it shows how experiments-based research can identify ethical values people employ in different market settings, in this example, those used to determine how people are willing to ration health care. The paper concludes with brief discussion of how, for a multidisciplinary ethics in economics, ethics can affect future economics. |
| Keywords: | ethics, economics, mainstream economics, World Values Survey, stratification economics, experimental research, future economics |
| JEL: | A12 A13 A23 B41 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrq:wpaper:2025-03 |