Genetic predispositions moderate the effectiveness of tobacco excise taxes.

BACKGROUND: Tobacco consumption is one of the leading causes of preventable death. In this study, we analyze whether someone's genetic predisposition to smoking moderates the response to tobacco excise taxes. METHODS: We interact polygenic scores for smoking behavior with state-level tobacco excise taxes in longitudinal data (1992-2016) from the US Health and Retirement Study (N = 12,058). RESULTS: Someone's genetic propensity to smoking moderates the effect of tobacco excise taxes on smoking behavior along the extensive margin (smoking vs. not smoking) and the intensive margin (the amount of tobacco consumed). In our analysis sample, we do not find a significant gene-environment interaction effect on smoking cessation. CONCLUSIONS: When tobacco excise taxes are relatively high, those with a high genetic predisposition to smoking are less likely (i) to smoke, and (ii) to smoke heavily. While tobacco excise taxes have been effective in reducing smoking, the gene-environment interaction effects we observe in our sample suggest that policy makers could benefit from taking into account the moderating role of genes in the design of future tobacco control policies

Prescription opioids and new business establishments

The effects of opioid abuse on health are widely documented, however, its effects on labor market outcomes have only recently become a topic of scientific inquiry. Whereas recent economic studies focus on various measures of labor market participation, the present study analyzes whether opioid prescription rates are associated with the impetus for entrepreneurial activity. By drawing on samples of US counties and US neighbor county-pairs across state borders from the years 2007 to 2016, we find that higher opioid prescription rates are associated with fewer non-employer establishments and new firms employing 1–4 employees. In an ancillary analysis of 50 US states from the years 2006 to 2016, we further show that opioid prescription rates are associated with lower entrepreneurial activity in general and opportunity-based entrepreneurial activity in particular. Overall, both the county-level and state-level analyses show that a higher rate of opioid prescriptions is negatively associated with new business formation. Although the estimated effect sizes are small, they are sizeable in absolute terms

A decade of research on the genetics of entrepreneurship: a review and view ahead

Studies analyzing the heritability of entrepreneurship indicate that explanations for why people engage in entrepreneurship that ignore genes are incomplete. However, despite promises that were solidly backed up with ex ante power calculations, atte

The Impact of the Public Disclosure of Curved Inspection Scores Using Emojis on Hygiene Violations in Food Establishments

Policymakers increasingly develop initiatives to influence business and consumer behavior. Among the initiatives to increase the compliance of food establishments to hygiene standards is the public disclosure of hygiene inspection scores. In this study, we analyze the impact of the 2017 law change in King County (Washington state, USA) mandating the presentation of hygiene inspection scores at the front door using an emoji-based display with information about the food establishment’s relative performance to other food establishments in the zip code area. Based on information from 82,545 food inspections in 8,010 food establishments in the period August 2014 to May 2019, we find that the rolling implementation of these displays had a small but meaningful impact on food inspection scores and hygiene violations. As a result of the new display, hygiene scores improved and the odds of failing inspection declined

Multivariate analysis reveals shared genetic architecture of brain morphology and human behavior.

Human variation in brain morphology and behavior are related and highly heritable. Yet, it is largely unknown to what extent specific features of brain morphology and behavior are genetically related. Here, we introduce a computationally efficient approach for multivariate genomic-relatedness-based restricted maximum likelihood (MGREML) to estimate the genetic correlation between a large number of phenotypes simultaneously. Using individual-level data (N = 20,190) from the UK Biobank, we provide estimates of the heritability of gray-matter volume in 74 regions of interest (ROIs) in the brain and we map genetic correlations between these ROIs and health-relevant behavioral outcomes, including intelligence. We find four genetically distinct clusters in the brain that are aligned with standard anatomical subdivision in neuroscience. Behavioral traits have distinct genetic correlations with brain morphology which suggests trait-specific relevance of ROIs. These empirical results illustrate how MGREML can be used to estimate internally consistent and high-dimensional genetic correlation matrices in large datasets

Separation From the Life Partner and Exit From Self-Employment

The survival of businesses in the market often hinges on contributions of the business owner’s household members. Partners of the self-employed as well as their children may, for example, provide emotional support but also cheap and flexible labor. Although the household composition of self-employed individuals has been analyzed in many earlier studies, little is known about what happens to the self-employed individual and his or her business when one separates from a life partner. We argue that separation from a life partner has profound financial and social consequences for the business owner. Specifically, we propose that a decrease in household income and social functioning (which is the degree of interference with social activities due to mental and/or physical problems) after separation from the life partner may lead to an exit from self-employment. Our empirical analysis draws on data from the longitudinal HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia) survey, for the period 2002–2017. Based on information from 4,044 self-employed individuals aged 18–64 years (18,053 individual-year observations), we find that separating from the life partner in the past year significantly increases the probability of exit from self-employment in the next year. Furthermore, we find that the positive association between separation from the life partner and exit from self-employment can be explained for 29.7% by a reduction in social functioning and for 10.7% by a reduction in household income. We study five exit routes out of self-employment and find that separation from the life partner mainly increases the probabilities of becoming a wage worker and of re-entering self-employment after experiencing an exit. For exit to unemployment or to a position outside the labor force (voluntarily inactive/retirement or any other non-labor force position), we find insignificant relationships with separation from the life partner. Furthermore, for all exit routes except retirement, we find significant indirect effects implying that decreased household income and levels of social functioning are important mechanisms through which separation from the life partner is related to exit from self-employment

Genes, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We demonstrate that the same genetic score that predicts education is also associated with higher wages, but only among individuals with a college education. Moreover, the genetic gradient in wages has grown in more recent birth cohorts, consistent with interactions between technological change and labor market ability. We also show that individuals who grew up in economically disadvantaged households are less likely to go to college when compared to individuals with the same genetic score, but from higher socioeconomic status households. Our findings provide support for the idea that childhood socioeconomic status is an important moderator of the economic returns to genetic endowments. Moreover, the finding that childhood poverty limits the educational attainment of high-ability individuals suggests the existence of unrealized human potential