Cornelius A. Rietveld

Erasmus University Rotterdam | EUR

Measurement error in polygenic indices (PGIs) attenuates the estimation of their effects in regression models. We analyze and compare two approaches addressing this attenuation bias: Obviously Related Instrumental Variables (ORIV) and the PGI Repository Correction (PGI-RC). Through simulations, we show that the PGI-RC performs slightly better than...

Polygenic indices (PGIs) are increasingly used to identify individuals at risk of developing disease and are advocated as screening tools for personalized medicine and education. Here we empirically assess rank concordance between PGIs created with different construction methods and discovery samples, focusing on cardiovascular disease and educatio...

Identifying genetic determinants of reproductive success may highlight mechanisms underlying fertility and identify alleles under present-day selection. Using data in 785,604 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 43 genomic loci associated with either number of children ever born (NEB) or childlessness. These loci span diverse aspects of...

Mediation analysis is commonly used to identify mechanisms and intermediate factors between causes and outcomes. Studies drawing on polygenic scores (PGSs) can readily employ traditional regression-based procedures to assess whether trait M mediates the relationship between the genetic component of outcome Y and outcome Y itself. However, this appr...

Labor market institutions (LMIs) could enable new firm entry by lowering burdens to attracting and retaining human capital or restrict new firm entry by increasing concerns of additional demands on ventures facing liabilities of newness and smallness. In this study, we focus on the LMI of the right of association, and whether its relationship with...

Data collected through the National Expert Survey (NES) of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) are widely used to benchmark and assess the quality and impact of national entrepreneurial ecosystems. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the publicly available NES data, we show that the construct validity of the survey is not sufficient and that...

We analyze the relationship between entrepreneurship and decision making under risk and uncertainty using the Columbia Card Task: an experimental task eliciting affective decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty. In a sample of 127 university students, we find robust evidence that individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) is nega...

Background Heritability and genetic correlation can be estimated from genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data using various methods. We recently developed multivariate genomic-relatedness-based restricted maximum likelihood (MGREML) for statistically and computationally efficient estimation of SNP-based heritability ( $$h^2_{\text{SNP...

Although it seems almost a stylized fact that females are less likely than males to start new ventures, closing this gender gap is essential to foster sustainable economic growth. In this study, we analyze whether gender inequality, as measured at the country level by the World Economic Forum since 2006, is associated with the gender gap in entrepr...

Polygenic indices (PGIs) are increasingly used to identify individuals at high risk of developing diseases and disorders and are advocated as a screening tool for personalised intervention in medicine and education. The performance of PGIs is typically assessed in terms of the amount of phenotypic variance they explain in independent prediction sam...

Data collected through the National Expert Survey (NES) of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) are widely used to assess the quality and impact of national entrepreneurial ecosystems. By focusing on the measurement of the National Entrepreneurship Context Index (NECI), we argue and show that the subjective nature of the responses of the natio...

We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide-significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A genome-wide polygenic predictor, or polygenic index (PGI), explains 12–16% of EA variance and contributes to risk predi...

An emerging stream of literature argues that values entail a prime channel through which belonging to a religion and entrepreneurship are related. In this study, we introduce Schwartz’s theory of basic human values to theorize on the role of values in the reciprocal relationship between belonging to a religion and entrepreneurship. Based on the mot...

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 explores the potential uses of genetic data in economics, wi...

Policy makers and entrepreneurs increasingly use storytelling to nurture cultures inside and outside organizations. In this article, we explore how the biblical narrative in which God is characterized by a lasting entrepreneurial commitment to achieve “win-win” situations may inspire commercial entrepreneurs to take actions in which they transcend...

Background Tobacco consumption is one of the leading causes of preventable death. In this study, we analyze whether someone’s genetic predisposition to smoking moderates the response to tobacco excise taxes. Methods We interact polygenic scores for smoking behavior with state-level tobacco excise taxes in longitudinal data (1992-2016) from the US...

We present evidence on the long-term relationship between the breadth (the proportion of households) and depth (the amount per household) of public assistance and the prevalence of self-employment in US neighbourhoods. The analysis of decennial data of 71,437 census tracts over four decades (1970 to 2000) shows that the poverty ratio lowers self-em...

Human variation in brain morphology and behavior are related and highly heritable. Yet, it is largely unknown to what extent specific features of brain morphology and behavior are genetically related. Here, we introduce a computationally efficient approach for multivariate genomic-relatedness-based restricted maximum likelihood (MGREML) to estimate...

The effects of opioid abuse on health are widely documented, however, its effects on labor market outcomes have only recently become a topic of scientific inquiry. Whereas recent economic studies focus on various measures of labor market participation, the present study analyzes whether opioid prescription rates are associated with the impetus for...

Studies analyzing the heritability of entrepreneurship indicate that explanations for why people engage in entrepreneurship that ignore genes are incomplete. However, despite promises that were solidly backed up with ex ante power calculations, attempts to identify specific genetic variants underlying the heritable variation in entrepreneurship hav...

We conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of relative intake from the macronutrients fat, protein, carbohydrates, and sugar in over 235,000 individuals of European ancestries. We identified 21 unique, approximately independent lead SNPs. Fourteen lead SNPs are uniquely associated with one macronutrient at genome-wide significance (P < 5 ×...

Human variation in brain morphology and behavior are related and highly heritable. Yet, it is largely unknown to what extent specific features of brain morphology and behavior are genetically related. Here, we introduce multivariate genomic-relatedness restricted maximum likelihood (MGREML) and provide estimates of the heritability of grey-matter v...

Polygenic scores have become the workhorse for empirical analyses in social-science genetics. Because a polygenic score is constructed using the results of finite-sample Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWASs), it is a noisy approximation of the true latent genetic predisposition to a certain trait. The conventional way of boosting the predictive p...

Drawing on the World Economic Forum’s goals of inclusive growth, we analyze whether globalization imbues confidence to engage in entrepreneurship in countries at different stages of economic development. We focus on the association between globalization and three core perceptions about entrepreneurship—the perceived presence of good opportunities t...

The birth order literature emphasizes the role of parental investments in explaining why firstborns have higher human capital outcomes than their laterborn siblings. We use birth order as a proxy for investments and interact it with genetic endowments. Exploiting only within-family variation in both ensures they are exogenous as well as orthogonal...

Tobacco consumption is one of the leading causes of preventable death. While some public policies have been effective in reducing the smoking prevalence in the United States, high tobacco excise taxes do not appear to deter all individuals from starting smoking nor to affect the smoking intensity of all those who do smoke. Here, we analyse whether...

It is well-established that both the child’s genetic endowments as well as maternal smoking during pregnancy impact offspring birth weight. In this paper we move beyond the nature versus nurture debate by investigating the interaction between genetic endowments and this critical prenatal environmental exposure – maternal smoking – in determining bi...

The earnings of the self-employed are relatively low and volatile, a risk that exacerbated during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Using three two-weeks-apart waves of data from the Understanding America Study, we show that relative to wage workers, the self-employed experience greater psychological distress through self-reported financial insecurity...

The survival of businesses in the market often hinges on contributions of the business owner’s household members. Partners of the self-employed as well as their children may, for example, provide emotional support but also cheap and flexible labor. Although the household composition of self-employed individuals has been analyzed in many earlier stu...

We investigate whether the polygenic risk score (PRS) of subjective well-being (SWB), a weighted combination of multiple genetic variants which captures an individual’s time-invariant genetic predisposition to SWB, influences the choice of self-employment and whether it explains differences in earnings between older self-employed and employed worke...

Policymakers increasingly develop initiatives to influence business and consumer behavior. Among the initiatives to increase the compliance of food establishments to hygiene standards is the public disclosure of hygiene inspection scores. In this study, we analyze the impact of the 2017 law change in King County (Washington state, USA) mandating th...

Van Praag et al. (2013) analyze whether the returns to formal education in terms of income differ between entrepreneurs and employees. Using US data (1979–2000), they find that entrepreneurs have higher returns to formal education than employees. They also find evidence that the level of personal control in one’s occupation explains these higher re...

Multiple studies have shown that, on average, the self-employed are healthier than wage workers. The link between the health of self-employed individuals and their financial performance in terms of earnings is, however, less understood. Based on human capital theory, we expect a positive link between health and earnings among the self-employed. For...

Recent studies have shown that individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are relatively often engaged in self-employment. We analyze whether self-employment mediates the relationship between ADHD and earnings. To overcome endogeneity concerns in the estimation of this relationship, we use the polygenic risk score (PRS) for AD...

This study analyzes the relation between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and later-life labor market outcomes in the United States and whether these relationships are mediated by educational attainment. To overcome endogeneity concerns in the estimation of these relationships, we exploit the polygenic risk score (PRS) for ADHD in a...

Objective This study contributes to the literature on the income and wealth consequences of obesity by exploiting recent discoveries about the genetic basis of BMI. Methods The relation between a genetic risk score (GRS) for BMI, which reflects the genetic predisposition to have a higher body weight, and income and wealth was analyzed in a longitu...

Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. We identified 611 approximately independent genetic loci associ...

Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. We identified 611 approximately independent genetic loci associ...

Higher educational attainment (EA) is negatively associated with schizophrenia (SZ). However, recent studies found a positive genetic correlation between EA and SZ. We investigate possible causes of this counterintuitive finding using genome-wide association study results for EA and SZ (N = 443,581) and a replication cohort (1169 controls; 1067 cas...

We conducted genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of relative caloric intake from fat, protein, carbohydrates and sugar in over 235,000 individuals. We identified 21 approximately independent lead SNPs. Relative protein intake exhibits the strongest relationships with poor health, including positive genetic associations with obesity,...

Overconfidence is one of the alleged drivers for market entry. However, establishing its effect is challenging and much of the existing entrepreneurship literature confusingly conflates overconfidence with optimism. In the present study, we use validated scales to analyze the relationship between overconfidence and two important aspects of entrepre...

We synthesize two recent advances in the literature on instrumental variables (IVs) estimation that test and relax the exclusion restriction. Our approach first estimates the direct effect of the IV on the outcome in a subsample for which the IV does not affect the treatment variable. Subsequently, this estimate for the direct effect is used as inp...

Higher educational attainment (EA) is negatively associated with schizophrenia (SZ). However, recent studies found a positive genetic correlation between EA and SZ. We investigated possible causes of this counterintuitive finding using genome-wide association study results for EA and SZ (N = 443,581) and a replication cohort (1,169 controls; 1,067...

The epigenome is associated with biological factors, such as disease status, and environmental factors, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index. Although there is a widespread perception that environmental influences on the epigenome are pervasive and profound, there has been little evidence to date in humans with respect to enviro...

The aim of this study is to provide an explanation for the finding in earlier studies that the self-employed are, on average, more satisfied with their work than the paid employed are, although they are not more satisfied with their life in general. Fixed-effects regressions are performed with German Socio-Economic Panel data (1984–2012) to investi...

Background There is now convincing evidence that pleiotropy across the genome contributes to the correlation between human traits and comorbidity of diseases. The recent availability of genome-wide association study (GWAS) results have made the polygenic risk score (PRS) approach a powerful way to perform genetic prediction and identify genetic ove...

Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes. Despite intelligence having substantial heritability (0.54) and a confirmed polygenic nature, initial genetic studies were mostly underpowered. Here we report a meta-analysis for intelligence of 78,308 individuals. We identify 336 associated SNPs (METAL P < 5 × 10(...