Abstract

This paper reports new experimental evidence on the effect of economics training on two different dimensions of social cooperation: trust and reciprocity, which are measured by means of the Trust Game. We employ sampling and matching procedures joined with recruiting by selective invitation in order to separate the effect of studying economics from the potential effect of self selection of preferences by those who choose economics as their career. Our sample is formed by university students of economics and other disciplines with little or no economic content in Chile. We find that the amounts sent by economists in the first stage of the Trust Game were significantly smaller than those sent by their peers from other disciplines, suggesting that economists trusted others significantly less than their counterparts. We also find that economists are less likely to return the promised amounts, which indicates a reduced tendency to reciprocate the trust shown by others.