Economic preferences may be shaped by exposure to sex hormones around birth. Prior studies of economic preferences and numerous other phenotypic characteristics use digit ratios (2D:4D), a purported proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure, whose validity has recently been questioned. We use...

Most of the literature that exploits business cycle variation at birth to study long-run effects of economic conditions on health later in life is based on pre-1940 birth cohorts. They were born in times where social safety nets were largely absent and they grew up in societies with relatively...