Are genetic markers of interest for economic research?

Steven Lehrer () and Weili Ding

IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2017, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-23

Abstract: Abstract The idea that genetic differences may explain a multitude of individual-level outcomes studied by economists is far from controversial. Since more datasets now contain measures of genetic variation, it is reasonable to postulate that incorporating genomic data in economic analyses will become more common. However, there remains much debate among academics as to, first, whether ignoring genetic differences in empirical analyses biases the resulting estimates. Second, several critics argue that since genetic characteristics are immutable, the incorporation of these variables into economic analysis will not yield much policy guidance. In this paper, we revisit these concerns and survey the main avenues by which empirically oriented economic researchers have utilized measures of genetic markers to improve our understanding of economic phenomena. We discuss the strengths, limitations, and potential of existing approaches and conclude by highlighting several prominent directions forward for future research. JEL Classification: I12, J19, I26

Keywords: Genetic markers; Gene–environment interactions; Genome-wide association studies; Candidate genes; Genetic instruments; Within-family variation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40173-017-0080-6 Abstract (text/html)

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:spr:izalpo:v:6:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1186_s40173-017-0080-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40173

DOI: 10.1186/s40173-017-0080-6

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Policy is currently edited by Juan F. Jimeno, David Neumark and Núria Rodríguez-Planas

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Policy from Springer, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().