Preferences and Twins (fg)

Hi folks, news from the preference front! Researchers from Stockholm School of Economics released a paper "Genetic Influences on Economic Preferences". They kept track of genetic and environmental influences on experimentally elicited preferences for risk and altruism with the use of classical twin design. This sounds interesting to me since I am a twin. Here are the results:

We use the classical twin design to provide estimates of genetic and environmental influences on experimentally elicited preferences for risk and altruism. Our estimates provide strong prima facie evidence that economic preferences are heritable. Approximately 30 percent of the variation in behavior is explained by genetic effects in the best-fitting models. The results suggest a modest role for common environment as a source of phenotypic variation. Based on the findings, we encourage economists to move beyond a black-box treatment of preference formation and suggest that the further study of the codetermination of preferences by genes and environment will lead to a more comprehensive economic science.

We find strong evidence that economic preferences are heritable. For altruism as well as risk preferences the genetic effect is significantly different from zero. In our best fitting models, the point estimates suggest that 35 percent of the variation in altruism and 27 percent of variation in risk preferences is explained by genetic influences.

Furthermore, our results suggest only a modest role for common environment as a source of phenotypic variation. We argue that the significance of these results extends well beyond documenting an important, but hitherto largely ignored, source of preference heterogeneity. For example, although it is widely accepted that parent-offspring correlations in isolation cannot be used to discriminate between theories of genetic and cultural transmission, much economic research is carried out under the presumption that genetic transmission is small enough that it can be ignored. Such an assumption is not consistent with our findings.

Hey, brother, are you d'accord?