Genetic Variation in Preferences for Giving and Risk Taking

David Cesarini (), Christopher T. Dawes, Magnus Johannesson (), Paul Lichtenstein and Björn Wallace
Additional contact information
Christopher T. Dawes: Political Science Department, University of California at San Diego.
Paul Lichtenstein: Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet.
Björn Wallace: Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics.

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2009, vol. 124, issue 2, pages 809-842

Abstract: 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. (c) 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..

Date: 2009
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.809 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Genetic Variation in Preferences for Giving and Risk-Taking (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:124:y:2009:i:2:p:809-842

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://mitpress.mit. ... me.tcl?issn=00335533

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is edited by Robert J. Barro, Edward L. Glaeser and Lawrence F. Katz

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from MIT Press
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().