New York Times, Does Studying Economics Make You More Republican?:

Several academic studies have found that there is a link between education levels and civic behavior. But a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has concluded that how much economics people study can influence their political activity and how they spend their spare time.

The study compared the behavior of economics majors with those of business majors and other graduates of four large public universities — Purdue University, the University of North Carolina, Florida Atlantic University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The subjects attended those schools in one of three years: 1976, 1986 or 1996.

Most notably, the study found that the more economics classes a person took, the more likely he or she was to be a member of the Republican Party and to donate money to a political candidate or a cause.