Testosterone is associated with self-employment among Australian men
Abstract
Testosterone has pronounced effects on men’s physiological development and smaller, more nuanced, impacts on their economic behavior. In this study of 1,199 Australian adult males, we investigate the relationship between the self-employed and their serum testosterone levels. Because prior studies have identified that testosterone is a hormone that is responsive to external factors (e.g. competition, risk-taking), we explicitly control for omitted variable bias and reverse causality by using an instrumental variable approach. We use insulin as our primary instrument to account for endogeneity between testosterone and self-employment. This is because prior research has identified a relationship between insulin and testosterone but not between insulin and self-employment. Our results show that there is a positive association between total testosterone and self-employment. Robustness checks using bioavailable testosterone and another similar instrument (daily alcohol consumption) confirm this positive finding.
Citation
Greene , F , Han , L , Martin , S , Zhang , S & Wittert , G 2014 , ' Testosterone is associated with self-employment among Australian men ' , Economics and Human Biology , vol. 13 , pp. 76-84 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2013.02.003
Publication
Economics and Human Biology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1570-677XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2013.02.003
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