Attitudes of Turkish students against markets: does studying economics matter?

Çokgezen, Murat; Çilingirtürk, Ahmet Mete

doi:10.1108/ijse-05-2013-0120

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Whaples [31] found a small shift towards a belief that 'markets are fair' during the course of economics students' first year of study. However, Cokgezen and Cilingirturk [12] found that these results were not replicated with their sample of Turkish undergraduates in Istanbul. We found one previous study that investigated the association between undergraduates' economic beliefs and their attitudes towards environmental policies.…”

Section: The Effect Of Studying Economics On Attitudes Towards the Romentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Some other studies [10][11][12] have made a priori judgements that individuals will adopt different stances towards the role of the government, according to the context (e.g., welfare, environment, health). For example, Lephardt and Breeden [13] include one item: "in my opinion the market system in the US encourages abuse of the environment".…”

Section: General Attitudes Towards Markets and Government In The Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning Economics and Attitudes to Market Solutions to Environmental Problems

2017

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Climate change challenges governments to reduce emissions, and to gain support for such actions from their citizens. This can be in the form of taxation or legislation, or other forms of government interventions. In previous research, several instruments have been developed to capture attitudes towards the roles of markets and governments in the economy. Some of these instruments have assumed that respondents will have the same attitude towards the role of markets and governments, regardless of the context (e.g., welfare, environment, health) or the form of government intervention (law, taxation, subsidy, spending etc.). However, these studies have not examined attitudes towards, or belief in, the efficacy of government intervention in markets, through microeconomic policies on taxation (e.g., duties levied on particular products) or subsidies. This paper reports on the results of taking such a specific focus, that is, investigating economics students' knowledge of, and attitudes towards, government interventions in markets, specifically addressing the problem of climate change. We make use of unique, two-wave longitudinal data from Swedish university students. The data were collected during their initial semester at the university. The first data collection was performed at the beginning of the semester, August/September 2014, and the second wave of data collection was performed in December/January 2014/2015, at the end of the semester. We were able to match 414 students between the first and second survey. The results show that students of economics change their policy attitudes and become more knowledgeable in economics. After one semester, they are more likely to think of economic instruments/incentives (taxes and subsidies) as good and efficient policy instruments, and less likely to think that other instruments (regulation and information) are good and efficient policy instruments. However, further analyses show that knowledgeable students do not have different attitudes toward environmental policy instruments, compared to students who do not answer the questions correctly. Hence, there seems to be some other factor affecting students in economics during their first semester, that changes their attitudes towards environmental policy instruments.

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Section: The Effect Of Studying Economics On Attitudes Towards the Romentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: General Attitudes Towards Markets and Government In The Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Economics and Attitudes to Market Solutions to Environmental Problems

2017

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“…For instance, Price and Wolfers’ (2010) study on racial bias among basketball referees could have incorporated a (second-order) analysis of how the publication of this first-order theory can lead to new regulations, different training of umpires, and just generally an awareness of racial bias—changes that could lead to an adjustment of behavior and explain the self-falsification of their own original study in this particular setting. In the case of the argued change in self-interested behavior among economics students, one could identify whether it is the syllabus used, the teachers’ beliefs, or other elements that influence behavior (Cokgezen and Cilingirturk 2014). Even if one rejects the existence of self-fulfillment, but “merely” accepts simple, generic performativity, one acknowledges that (the adoption of) theories can influence social behavior, and to properly assess theories and the impact adoption might have, one should actually carry out such comparative, social science experiments, as pointed out by Santos (2011).…”

Section: A Realistic Social Science Realism: Cooling the Firementioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Fulfillment of Social Science Theories

Bergenholtz

Busch

2015

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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Self-fulfillment of theories is argued to be a threat to the social science in at least two ways. Firstly, a realist might worry that self-fulfillment constitutes a threat to the idea that social science is a proper science consistent with a realist approach that develops true and successful statements about the world. Secondly, one might argue that the potential self-fulfilling nature of social science theories potentially undermines the ethical integrity of social scientists. We argue that if one accepts that social science theories are not based on laws akin to those that govern natural reality or acknowledges that if one can predict self-fulfillment via a meta-theory that explains the underlying regularities of the self-fulfilling change, the threat to realism is dismantled. Furthermore, on the basis of these arguments we show that if one is not able to predict the (moral) consequences of a theory, it is difficult to ascribe moral responsibility at the individual level. It is therefore not the potential self-fulfillment of theories per se that poses an ethical challenge, in contrast to claims in the literature.

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Attitudes of Turkish students against markets: does studying economics matter?

Cited by 2 publications

References 14 publications

Learning Economics and Attitudes to Market Solutions to Environmental Problems

Learning Economics and Attitudes to Market Solutions to Environmental Problems

Self-Fulfillment of Social Science Theories

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