Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 124 No. 2 2009

Genetic Variation in Preferences for Giving and Risk Taking*

David Cesarini¹; Christopher T. Dawes²; Magnus Johannesson³; Paul Lichtenstein⁴; Björn Wallace³

¹ Massachusetts Institute of Technology · ² Political Science Department, University of California at San Diego · ³ Stockholm School of Economics · ⁴ Karolinska Institutet

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..

DOI

10.1162/qjec.2009.124.2.809

Volume

124

Issue

2

Pages

809-842

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex openalex crossref

Cite

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