Genoeconomics is an interdisciplinary field of

protoscience __NOTOC__ In the philosophy of science, there are several definitions of protoscience. Its simplest meaning (most closely reflecting its roots of '' proto-'' + ''science'') involves the earliest eras of the history of science, when the scientific m ...

that combines

molecular genetics Molecular genetics is a sub-field of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the ...

and

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

. Genoeconomics is based on the idea that economic indicators have a genetic basisthat a person's financial behaviour can be traced to their DNA and that genes are related to economic behaviour. As of 2015, the results have been inconclusive. Some minor correlations have been identified between genetics and economic preferences.

History

The word ''genoeconomics'' was coined in 2007. The field of economics and the economic indicators used by economists predate the Empiricist Age. Genoeconomics adds biological foundations to these traditional economic indicators. Quantitative genetic data was not available to researchers until the year 2000, when the human genome was sequenced as part of the Human Genome Project. Genetic milestones of the late 20th and early 21st century, such as the sequencing of the human genome, has spurred interest in research combining economics and genetics.

Background

Genoeconomics involves the study of

single-nucleotide polymorphism In genetics, a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP ; plural SNPs ) is a germline substitution of a single nucleotide at a specific position in the genome. Although certain definitions require the substitution to be present in a sufficiently lar ...

s (SNPs). The field of genoeconomics uses genetic data to infer economic preferences such as

time preference In economics, time preference (or time discounting, delay discounting, temporal discounting, long-term orientation) is the current relative valuation placed on receiving a good or some cash at an earlier date compared with receiving it at a later ...

risk aversion In economics and finance, risk aversion is the tendency of people to prefer outcomes with low uncertainty to those outcomes with high uncertainty, even if the average outcome of the latter is equal to or higher in monetary value than the more c ...

, and

educational attainment Educational attainment is a term commonly used by statisticians to refer to the highest degree of education an individual has completed as defined by the US Census Bureau Glossary. See also *Academic achievement *Academic degree *Bachelor's degree ...

, as well as

macroeconomic Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

data such as per-capita income. For example, genoeconomic methodology was used in a 2012 study of tobacco taxes in the United States, where such taxes vary across jurisdictions, to look at "the interaction of a single nicotinic receptor and state-level tobacco taxes to predict tobacco use". Additionally, genoeconomic research in 2013 found that two-fifths of the "variance of educational attainment is explained by genetic factors". Some genoeconomic researchers claim that the economic success of a country can be predicted by its genetic diversity. The American economist Enrico Spolaore says that genoeconomic work could "reduce barriers to the flows of ideas and innovations across populations".

Criticism and limitations

Genoeconomic research is prone to the public misconception that genetically-influenced behaviours are separate from environmental factors. The authors of a 2012 paper said that their work "is not about a

nature or nurture Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English h ...

debate". ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' published an online article written in 2012 about the various reactions on the subject. The field is criticized by biologists for lacking methodological rigour, drawing conclusions about causation based on causal correlation, and working with small sample sizes. The political implications of the field are also a concern for some scientists; anticipating the publication of a genoeconomics article in the journal '' American Economic Review'', a group of scientists and social scientists wrote an open letter which said that "the suggestion that an ideal level of genetic variation could foster economic growth and could even be engineered has the potential to be misused with frightening consequences to justify indefensible practices such as ethnic cleansing or genocide". As with other genetic-association research, the reproducibility of genoeconomic experiments is troublesome to the field. The small sample sizes used in genoeconomic research are also a problem. Commonly cited by scientists as a way to improve genoeconomic research is the use of more statistically homogeneous samples.

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * Interdisciplinary subfields of economics Molecular genetics Behavioural genetics {{genetics-stub