‘I believe that we actually do harm to our students in only teaching them the intricacies of
mathematical models and that we are unintentionally distorting their economic views.’
That is the conclusion of Professor Ariel Rubinstein, writing in the March 2006 issue of the
Economic Journal.
Professor Rubinstein reports on a survey he carried out in which subjects were asked to
imagine themselves the vice-president of a company having to decide whether to maximise
the company's profits by laying off half of the workforce or to make do with firing less than
the number required to maximise profits.
The subjects were essentially being presented with a dilemma of how to balance their
responsibility to the company's goals and their commitment to the workers.
The survey was conducted among several groups of Israeli students, mostly from Tel Aviv
University.
The results show sharp differences between the economics students and the others.
Supporting evidence comes from two follow-up studies Rubinstein conducted among
several thousand readers of an Israeli business newspaper and among several dozen
graduate economics students at Harvard University.
ENDS
Notes for editors: ‘A Sceptic’s Comment on the Study of Economics’ by Ariel Rubinstein is
published in the March 2006 issue of the Economic Journal.
Rubinstein is at the School of Economics, Tel Aviv University and the Department of
Economics, New York University.
For further information: contact Romesh Vaitilingam on 0117-983-9770 or 07768-661095
(email: romesh@compuserve.com) or Ariel Rubinstein via email: rariel@post.tau.ac.il
(website: http://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il).