Yale University, School of Public Health, 60 College Street, #303, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
J Health Econ. 2011 Jul;30(4):647-59. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.04.005. Epub 2011 May 17.
Drawing on findings from the biomedical literature, this paper introduces the idea that specific exogenously inherited differences in the genetic code between full biological siblings can be used to test within-family estimators and potentially improve our understanding of economic relationships. These points are illustrated with an application to identify the causal impact of several poor health conditions on academic outcomes. We present evidence that family fixed effects estimators by themselves cannot fully account for the endogeneity of poor health when estimating education production functions. Further, our analysis elucidates the situations under which genetic markers can serve as instrumental variables for specific health conditions.
本文借鉴生物医学文献中的研究结果，提出了这样一种观点，即在全同胞之间的遗传密码中外源性遗传的特定差异可用于检验家庭内估计量，并有可能增进我们对经济关系的理解。本文通过一个应用案例说明了这一点，该案例旨在确定若干不良健康状况对学业成绩的因果影响。我们的研究结果表明，在估计教育生产函数时，仅使用家庭固定效应估计量并不能完全说明不良健康状况的内生性。此外，我们的分析还阐明了在何种情况下遗传标记可以作为特定健康状况的工具变量。
