Genoeconomics

Here is one paragraph of an interesting-but-treads-quite-lightly story about what is possibly a new field of economics:

To talk to the genoeconomists about their vision for the field is to listen to people acutely reluctant to overpromise, or to come off as naive. Much of their forthcoming paper in the Annual Review of Economics, in fact, describes how the vast majority of studies that appeared to link individual genes to specific outcomes—the amount of education people receive, whether or not they are self-employed, how they invest their money—have turned out to be impossible to replicate. Their hope lies in a new approach to data-gathering that is only just getting underway, wherein researchers look for patterns among thousands, and even millions of people—numbers that are only just becoming possible thanks to massive collaborations linking gene studies being conducted all over the world.

Jeff, the source, offers some discussion here.

Addendum: I now see in the blogging software panel that Alex has a post on the way, covering this same article, it should be up later today and maybe his take is different than mine.

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