A major finding from research into the sources of subjective well-being is that individuals exhibit a "baseline" level of happiness. We explore the influence of genetic variation by employing a twin design and genetic association study. We first show that about 33% of the variation in happiness...

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The costs of comprehensively genotyping human subjects have fallen to the point where major funding bodies, even in the social sciences, are beginning to incorporate genetic and biological markers into major social surveys. How, if at all, should economists use and combine molecular genetic and...

The endowment effect, the tendency to value possessions more than non-possessions, is a well known departure from rational choice and has been replicated in numerous settings. We investigate the universality of the endowment effect, its evolutionary significance, and its dependence on...

We explore the influence of genetic variation on subjective well-being by employing a twin design and genetic association study. In a nationally-representative twin sample, we first show that about 33% of the variation in life satisfaction is explained by genetic variation. Although previous...

We tested whether friends’ and family members’ cardiovascular health events and also their own aspirin use are associated with the likelihood that an individual takes aspirin regularly. Analyses were based on longitudinal data on 2724 members of the Framingham Heart Study (based in...

We develop and analyze a tractable empirical model for strategic network formation that can be estimated with data from a single network at a single point in time. We model the network formation as a sequential process where in each period a single randomly selected pair of agents has the...

Research on happiness has produced valuable insights into the sources of subjective well-being that are of importance to economics. A major nding from this literature is that people exhibit a "baseline" level of happiness that shows persistent strength over time. Here we explore the extent to...

We study the behavioral processes undergirding physician forecasts, evaluating accuracy and systematic biases in estimates of patient survival and characterizing physicians' loss functions when it comes to prediction. Similar to other forecasting experts, physicians face different costs...