"A provocative and timely case for how the science of genetics can help create a more just and equal society. In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health-and in ways that matter for educational and economic...

We develop a polygenic index for individual income and examine random differences in this index with lifetime outcomes in a sample of ~35,000 biological siblings. We find that genetic fortune for higher income causes greater socio-economic status and better health, partly via intervenable...

We study the effects of genetic endowments on inequalities in education, income, and health. Specifically, we conduct the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of individual income, using data from individuals of European ancestries. We find that ≈10% of the variance in occupational wages...

We present a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between U.S. migration experience and earnings in the Mexican labor market. We use our model to analyze the effects of self-selection and endogeneity on OLS estimates of the return to migration experience in the Mexican labor...

We examine how commodity price shocks experienced by rural producers affect the drug trade in Mexico. Our analysis exploits exogenous movements in the Mexican maize price stemming from weather conditions in U.S. maize-growing regions, as well as export flows of other major maize producers. Using...

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...

Recent advances in behavioral genetics have enabled the discovery of genetic scores linked to a variety of economic outcomes, including education. We build on this progress to demonstrate that the same genetic variants that predict educational attainment independently predict household wealth in...

We hope to make a novel contribution to the literature by developing a model of an individual's migration and entrepreneurship decisions over the course of the life-cycle which captures all three explanations identified above. Using data from the MMP, we will estimate the parameters of this...

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...

Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one's genes) and nurture (one's environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper...