Economic training boosts cooperation – a contradiction?

General wisdom has it that Economic training and education tends to produce less cooperative people – either by a selection effect in Busi-ness and Economic professions or by teaching selfish behavior. This issue has attracted particular attention in the discussion of the cur-rent financial crisis where it was asked if an increasing marketization of societies has prepared the ground for amorally selfish behavior of financial intermediaries. We provide some evidence against this claim by help of an experiment. We show that in an investment game with a public-goods character a moderate training of strategic abilities in-creases the degree of cooperation. In addition, we show that coop-eration even further increases if participants learn about the social optimum. The results hint on a way to implement Economic training that is cooperation enhancing and not inhibiting