Does an Economics Education Produce Technocratic Paternalists? Experimental Evidence from Tanzania
通过随机实验，向坦桑尼亚商科和经济学学生提供普通公民对效率税收理论看法的信息，发现学生调整了税收偏好，且受经济学教育时间更长的学生影响更大，表明经济学教育培养出兼具民主和技术官僚家长主义倾向的专业人士。
When confronted with information that ordinary citizens do not care that strongly about efficiency, do economists change their views of optimal public policy? In a randomised experiment on tax preferences conducted among business and economics students in Tanzania, we supplied the treatment group with information that ordinary citizens disagree with implications of efficiency-based optimal tax theory. Tax preferences were then measured using discrete choice experiments. The results show that the treated students modify their position in the direction of public opinion, an effect driven by students with longer exposure to economics. An economics education hence seems to produce professionals who are part democrats and part technocratic paternalists.