The present dissertation uses economic3 constructs, models, and methods to contribute to educational research in four empirical studies. Psychological theories and constructs – in particular, from personality psychology – as well as sociological constructs are explic-itly considered in the studies, whenever they are needed for adequately treating a specific
3 In the remainder of this dissertation’s introduction as well as in the conclusion (chapter 6), whenever only the term “economic[s]” is used, it refers to business administration (in particular management science) as well as to economics in a narrower sense.
research question. Therefore, the present dissertation uses elements from behavioral eco-nomics – the systematic combination of psychology and ecoeco-nomics (see CAMERER 1999) – to empirically analyze the role of personality in the transition from the education system to the labor market. The interdisciplinary methodological approach shall now be ex-plained in more detail.
The dissertation follows the idea that the field of economics and business administra-tion is not only concerned with financial quesadministra-tions and the efficient distribuadministra-tion of scarce resources, but also linked to well-being, self-actualization, and social balance – together these goals highlight the important role of education. To understand what contributes to social and individual well-being, and to generate implications that are suitable in this re-gard, it is in some cases useful to overcome the abstractions and simplifications that are typical for classical and neoclassical economics4 and to perceive humans as complex be-ings with different and dynamic personalities.
An interdisciplinary approach, combining economics and other social science disci-plines such as psychology, has several advantages. On the one hand, core topics of eco-nomics – such as organization and efficiency – are arguably necessary to solve social problems. On the other hand, psychological factors, sociological factors, and insights from educational science may be crucial to work on some of the social issues sufficiently.
Thomas Piketty notes in his seminal book Capital in the Twenty-First Century: “To be useful, economists must above all learn to be more pragmatic in their methodological choices, to make use of whatever tools are available, and thus to work more closely with other social science disciplines.” (PIKETTY 2014: 757.)
Claims for interdisciplinarity in economic research have often been raised in relation to basic assumptions of economics. Neoclassical economic approaches are based on the idea that individuals exclusively aim at maximizing their own utility and proceed per-fectly rationally in their decisions (“economic man” or “homo oeconomicus”). Rational-ity in this context means that individuals know what they want (preference order), that these preferences are consistent (e.g., transitivity: If A is preferred over B and B over C, then A is preferred over C), and that individuals make their decisions accordingly. (See, e.g., HAMPICKE 1992.)
4 A fundamental description of neoclassical economics is given, e.g., by HAMPICKE (1992). Its precursor, the classical political economy, is described, e.g., by ALBERT (1995).
It is not necessary for a social science to give a “complete” account of human nature in each analysis; it is necessary, however, to consider factors that are systematically rele-vant for adequate predictions in a given situational context (see FRIEDMAN 1966: 3–16, 30–43). The concept of an economic man or homo oeconomicus has repeatedly been crit-icized because its implications are argued to be contradictory to empirical findings in some contexts (see, e.g., FALK 2003; HENRICH et al. 2005).
This criticism, however, is commonly based on the assumption that the economic man is a pure egoist (an exclusively self-interested individual). In fact, narrow self-interest is only one specific interpretation of a utility-maximizing and rational individual. In princi-ple, preferences (motives) regarding other individuals, regarding social company, and re-garding environmental protection can be included in individual utility functions. There are various possibilities to adjust theoretical utility functions to behavioral patterns that are systematically observed in empirical research (see KAHNEMAN/TVERSKY 1979).
Therefore, psychological and economic methodology may be closer to each other than the criticism of the “economic man” might suggest, and there is much potential for col-laboration (see, e.g., FREY 1998; KIRCHGÄSSNER 2014; STROEBE/FREY 1980).
The context of the present dissertation, the transition from the education system to the labor market, is strongly related to personality both from a theoretical and from an em-pirical perspective (see chapters 2–5). Therefore, it is crucial for this dissertation to con-sider psychological insights in (education) economics. The dissertation thereby contrib-utes to the growing literature in behavioral economics.
Recent research and developments reflect an increasing consideration of the im-portance of interdisciplinarity in economics. The Nobel Memorial Prize to the behavioral economist Richard H. Thaler is a particularly notable example. While behavioral eco-nomics has originally been a separate subfield of ecoeco-nomics, nowadays there are increas-ing claims and attempts to integrate and consider insights from behavioral economics within the different, traditional research areas of economics (see CHETTY 2015). An anal-ysis of citations between 1970 and 2015 shows that economics articles increasingly refer to other social sciences, on average; nowadays, economics is more likely to cite other social sciences than psychology (see ANGRIST et al. 2017: 4, 23). At the same time, other social sciences such as psychology and sociology are now substantially more likely to
cite economics papers (see ANGRIST et al. 2017: 24).5 In line with these developments, the present dissertation refers to psychological and sociological research within studies in the field of education economics.