We study the effect of wealth on labor supply using the randomized assignment of monetary prizes in a large sample of Swedish lottery players. Winning a lottery prize modestly reduces earnings, with ...the reduction being immediate, persistent, and quite similar by age, education, and sex. A calibrated dynamic model implies lifetime marginal propensities to earn out of unearned income from −0.17 at age 20 to −0.04 at age 60, and labor supply elasticities in the lower range of previously reported estimates. The earnings response is stronger for winners than their spouses, which is inconsistent with unitary household labor supply models.
The Fourth Law of Behavior Genetics Chabris, Christopher F.; Lee, James J.; Cesarini, David ...
Current directions in psychological science,
08/2015, Volume:
24, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Behavior genetics is the study of the relationship between genetic variation and psychological traits. Turkheimer (2000) proposed "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics" based on empirical regularities ...observed in studies of twins and other kinships. On the basis of molecular studies that have measured DNA variation directly, we propose a Fourth Law of Behavior Genetics: "A typical human behavioral trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each of which accounts for a very small percentage of the behavioral variability." This law explains several consistent patterns in the results of gene-discovery studies, including the failure of candidate-gene studies to robustly replicate, the need for genome-wide association studies (and why such studies have a much stronger replication record), and the crucial importance of extremely large samples in these endeavors. We review the evidence in favor of the Fourth Law and discuss its implications for the design and interpretation of gene-behavior research.
In this paper, we use the classical twin design to provide estimates of genetic and environmental influences on experimentally elicited preferences for risk and giving. Using standard methods from ...behavior genetics, we find strong prima facie evidence that these preferences are broadly heritable and our estimates suggest that genetic differences explain approximately twenty percent of individual variation. The results thus shed light on an important source of individual variation in preferences, a source that has hitherto been largely neglected in the economics literature.
Genetic Variation in Financial Decision-Making CESARINI, DAVID; JOHANNESSON, MAGNUS; LICHTENSTEIN, PAUL ...
The Journal of finance (New York),
October 2010, Volume:
65, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Individuals differ in how they construct their investment portfolios, yet empirical models of portfolio risk typically account only for a small portion of the cross-sectional variance. This paper ...asks whether genetic variation can explain some of these individual differences. Following a major pension reform Swedish adults had to form a portfolio from a large menu of funds. We match data on these investment decisions with the Swedish Twin Registry and find that approximately 25% of individual variation in portfolio risk is due to genetic variation. We also find that these results extend to several other aspects of financial decision-making.
Obesity is a worldwide epidemic, with major health and economic costs. Here we estimate heritability for body mass index (BMI) in 172,000 sibling pairs and 150,832 unrelated individuals and explore ...the contribution of genotype-covariate interaction effects at common SNP loci. We find evidence for genotype-age interaction (likelihood ratio test (LRT) = 73.58, degrees of freedom (df) = 1, P = 4.83 × 10
), which contributed 8.1% (1.4% s.e.) to BMI variation. Across eight self-reported lifestyle factors, including diet and exercise, we find genotype-environment interaction only for smoking behavior (LRT = 19.70, P = 5.03 × 10
and LRT = 30.80, P = 1.42 × 10
), which contributed 4.0% (0.8% s.e.) to BMI variation. Bayesian association analysis suggests that BMI is highly polygenic, with 75% of the SNP heritability attributable to loci that each explain <0.01% of the phenotypic variance. Our findings imply that substantially larger sample sizes across ages and lifestyles are required to understand the full genetic architecture of BMI.
Heritability of ultimatum game responder behavior Wallace, Björn; Cesarini, David; Lichtenstein, Paul ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
10/2007, Volume:
104, Issue:
40
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Experimental evidence suggests that many people are willing to deviate from materially maximizing strategies to punish unfair behavior. Even though little is known about the origins of such fairness ...preferences, it has been suggested that they have deep evolutionary roots and that they are crucial for maintaining and understanding cooperation among non-kin. Here we report the results of an ultimatum game, played for real monetary stakes, using twins recruited from the population-based Swedish Twin Registry as our subject pool. Employing standard structural equation modeling techniques, we estimate that >40% of the variation in subjects' rejection behavior is explained by additive genetic effects. Our estimates also suggest a very modest role for common environment as a source of phenotypic variation. Based on these findings, we argue that any attempt to explain observed ultimatum bargaining game behavior that ignores this genetic influence is incomplete.
Preferences are fundamental building blocks in all models of economic and political behavior. We study a new sample of comprehensively genotyped subjects with data on economic and political ...preferences and educational attainment. We use dense single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data to estimate the proportion of variation in these traits explained by common SNPs and to conduct genome-wide association study (GWAS) and prediction analyses. The pattern of results is consistent with findings for other complex traits. First, the estimated fraction of phenotypic variation that could, in principle, be explained by dense SNP arrays is around one-half of the narrow heritability estimated using twin and family samples. The molecular-genetic-based heritability estimates, therefore, partially corroborate evidence of significant heritability from behavior genetic studies. Second, our analyses suggest that these traits have a polygenic architecture, with the heritable variation explained by many genes with small effects. Our results suggest that most published genetic association studies with economic and political traits are dramatically underpowered, which implies a high false discovery rate. These results convey a cautionary message for whether, how, and how soon molecular genetic data can contribute to, and potentially transform, research in social science. We propose some constructive responses to the inferential challenges posed by the small explanatory power of individual SNPs.
Genetics and educational attainment Cesarini, David; Visscher, Peter M
NPJ science of learning,
02/2017, Volume:
2, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We explore how advances in our understanding of the genetics of complex traits such as educational attainment could constructively be leveraged to advance research on education and learning. We ...discuss concepts and misconceptions about genetic findings with regard to causes, consequences, and policy. Our main thesis is that educational attainment as a measure that varies between individuals in a population can be subject to exactly the same experimental biological designs as other outcomes, for example, those studied in epidemiology and medical sciences, and the same caveats about interpretation and implication apply.
Heritability of cooperative behavior in the trust game Cesarini, David; Dawes, Christopher T; Fowler, James H ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
03/2008, Volume:
105, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Although laboratory experiments document cooperative behavior in humans, little is known about the extent to which individual differences in cooperativeness result from genetic and environmental ...variation. In this article, we report the results of two independently conceived and executed studies of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, one in Sweden and one in the United States. The results from these studies suggest that humans are endowed with genetic variation that influences the decision to invest, and to reciprocate investment, in the classic trust game. Based on these findings, we urge social scientists to take seriously the idea that differences in peer and parental socialization are not the only forces that influence variation in cooperative behavior.
Recent research has demonstrated that genetic differences explain a sizeable fraction of the variance in political orientations, but little is known about the pathways through which genes might ...affect political preferences. In this article, we use a uniquely assembled dataset of almost 1,000 Swedish male twin pairs containing detailed information on cognitive ability and political attitudes in order to further examine the genetic and environmental causes of political orientations. Our study makes three distinct contributions to our understanding of the etiology of political orientations: (1) we report heritability estimates across different dimensions of political ideology; (2) we show that cognitive ability and political orientations are related; and (3) we provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis that cognitive ability mediates part of the genetic influence on political orientations. These findings provide important clues about the nature of the complex pathways from molecular genetic variation to political orientations.
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