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Abstract
Using data collected from graduates who attended four large public universities in 1976, 1986, or 1996, the authors investigate the relationship between studying economics and civic behaviors. They compare students who majored in economics, business, or other majors, and by the number of undergraduate economics courses completed. Coursework is strongly associated with political party affiliation and donating money to candidates or parties, but not with voting in presidential, state, or local elections, nor with the likelihood or intensity of volunteerism. Business majors are less likely to engage in voting and volunteering. More economics coursework is usually associated with attitudes on policy issues closer to those reported in surveys of U.S. economists, while attitudes of business majors are more like those of general majors than economics majors.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Board of the Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation for the grant that made this work possible, and the AEA Committee for Economic Education for bringing them together to write the proposal, as described in Salemi et al. (Citation2001). April Fidler provided major assistance in project coordination, administration, and data entry. Georg Schaur worked extensively with data organization and preliminary tabulations. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Notes
1. See Aldrich (Citation1993) for a discussion of rational voter models. Matsusaka and Palda (Citation1999) view the evidence of their model as supportive of rational voting models and counter to “psycho/sociological approaches” (431). See Conover and Feldman (Citation1986) for early work comparing the role of emotion versus cognition in voter turnout.
2. Walstad (Citation1987), Soper and Walstad (Citation1988), Walstad and Soper (Citation1989), and Beron (Citation1990) offer evidence of a recursive relationship between students’ levels of economic understanding and their attitudes on economic issues, with changes in understanding leading to changes in attitudes but changes in attitudes not leading to changes in levels of understanding.
3. We obtained mailing addresses from the alumni associations at each school, so only a small number (less than 1 percent) of those in our sample did not graduate.
4. Allgood et al. (Citation2004) provides more information on the survey and findings on perceptions of undergraduate experience with economics courses and instructors, compared to other subjects. Responses related to labor market experiences and personal financial decisions are analyzed in Allgood et al. (Citation2011).
5. The low response rate was predictable for several reasons. Some of those we surveyed graduated up to two decades earlier, and most were not economics majors. No payment was offered to complete the survey; and the survey form was long, with several items asking for very personal information. Given that, and compared to similar surveys (and especially mail surveys), our response rate does not seem out of line. For example, Frey and Meier (2003) administered a short, online survey to current students at the University of Zurich, with a response rate of 18 percent.
6. For a discussion of our efforts to deal with any remaining endogeneity biases due to omitted covariates, see Allgood et al. (Citation2011). Unfortunately, finding credible and sufficiently strong instrumental variables for economics course-taking has proven difficult.
7. The sample weight for each cohort-school-major combination is defined as the ratio of the group's share in the student population in each college in 1976, 1986, or 1996 (proxied by the total number of degrees awarded within four years of each date), divided by their share in the total sample of potential respondents (the share in the sample of individuals to whom we mailed questionnaires and for whom we obtained transcript data).
8. We differentiated courses both within and across general subject fields, resulting in 50 different course subjects.
9. NormalizedGPA is hard to interpret because we have taken out the major and college-specific means. Consequently, comparing the average fixed effects across majors is meaningless.
10. The share of female majors in economics probably rose gradually over most of the 1976–96 period, although it has leveled off over the past few years even as the share of all BA/BS degrees going to females continues to rise.
11. Region of the country was determined based on the state used for mailing surveys.
12. As noted earlier in the article, in the discussion that follows, what we refer to as “marginal effects” should not necessarily be interpreted as causal effects.
13. Galston (Citation2001) reported that political knowledge is related to voter turnout, and Milligan, Moretti, and Oreopoulos (2004) found that the likelihood of voting in the United States is positively related to the level of education.
14. Freeman (Citation1997) found a positive relationship between the level of education and volunteering, but Gibson (Citation2001) found a negative relationship.
15. Their data are from the 1988 National Election Study (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ ICPSR/studies/9196), which used a nationally representative sample of voting age Americans.
16. Blinder and Krueger (Citation2004) report opinions of a nationally representative sample of households with more variation in education, income, and region of the country than in our sample. They report on several survey items that address similar policy issues, including the minimum wage and the federal deficit, where responses are similar to those we report here.
17. For example, the research of Card and Krueger (Citation1995) generated considerable debate about the youth employment effects of the minimum wage, and only our third cohort would have been exposed to this debate.
