'Geno-economics' Is a Thing, But Maybe It Shouldn't Be

Many outside critics of economics complain that it’s not a science. In response, most economists have steadily improved the quality of their empirical methods. But a few economists are taking a different tack by borrowing from natural science. Neuroeconomists, for example, have put experimental subjects in MRI machines to measure how their brains behave when they’re making economic decisions, in order to search for clues to the mechanisms behind everyday behavior.

Recently, a few economists have sought to use genetics to augment their understanding of economic outcomes. This has become possible thanks to the advent of cheap genome sequencing and widely available databases of human genetic information. But there are a number of reasons this line of research is likely to do more harm than good, at least until biologists better understand the ways that genes affect human development.