The Role of Novelty-Seeking Traits in Contemporary Knowledge Creation

Erkan Gören

VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: This paper hypothesizes and empirically establishes the persistent effects of novelty-seeking traits on cross-country differences in scientific knowledge creation. I use data on the prevalence of specific allele variants of the human DRD4 exon III gene, which population geneticists have linked to the human phenotype of novelty-seeking behavior to examine its relationship to scientific knowledge creation in society. The results suggest a positive and statistically significant linear relationship between both outcomes that is consistent with the hypothesis that the prevalence of novelty-seeking traits in society facilitates scientific knowledge creation through beneficial human behaviors related to risk-taking and explorative behavior. The empirical findings remain qualitatively unaffected when controlling for additional historical, biogeographical, and socioeconomic factors that appear as additional important determinants in the creation of scientific knowledge in society.

Keywords: DRD4 Exon III; Novelty-Seeking Traits; Entrepreneurial Activity; Knowledge Creation; Technological Progress; Economic Development; Natural Selection; Genetic Diversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N70 O30 O50 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/181593/1/VfS-2018-pid-13765.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Novelty-Seeking Traits in Contemporary Knowledge Creation (2017)
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:zbw:vfsc18:181593

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().