Credit card borrowing and the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and James H. Fowler

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2014, vol. 107, issue PB, 428-439

Abstract: Using a discovery and replication sample from a U.S. representative data set, we show that a functional polymorphism on the MAOA gene is associated with credit card borrowing behavior. For the combined sample of approximately 12,000 individuals we find that having one or both MAOA alleles of the less transcriptionally efficient type raises the average likelihood of reporting credit card debt by about 4%. These results suggest that behavioral models benefit from integrating genetic variation and that economists should consider the welfare consequences of possible discrimination by lenders on the basis of genotype.

Keywords: Credit card borrowing; Present-biased time preferences; MAOA gene; Genetic association study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 D91 G02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268114000717
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:107:y:2014:i:pb:p:428-439

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2014.03.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().