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Daniel Benjamin

Daniel Benjamin is a Professor at the Center for Economic and Social Research at USC. His research is in behavioral economics (which incorporates ideas and methods from psychology into economic analysis) and genoeconomics (which incorporates genetic data into economics). Benjamin co-organizes (with David Cesarini and Phil Koellinger) the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC), a collaborative research infrastructure involving over 70 data providers who have collected both whole-genome data and social-science measures. He received a PhD in Economics from Harvard, an MSc in Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics, an AM in Statistics from Harvard and an AB in Economics from Harvard.

By this expert

FAQs about “GWAS of 126,559 individuals identifies genetic variants associated with educational attainment”

Paper Conference paper | By Daniel Benjamin, David Cesarini, Philipp Koellinger, and Peter Visscher | Apr 2015

The SSGAC is a research infrastructure designed to stimulate dialogue and cooperation between medical researchers and social scientists. The SSGAC facilitates collaborative research that seeks to identify associations between specific genetic markers (segments of DNA) and behavioral traits, such as preferences, personality and social-science outcomes.

The Fourth Law of Behavior Genetics

Paper Conference paper | By Christopher Chabris, James J. Lee, David Cesarini, Daniel Benjamin, and David Laibson | Apr 2015

Behavior genetics is the study of the relationship between genetic variation and psychological traits. Turkheimer (2000) proposed “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics” based on empirical regularities observed in studies of twins and other kinships. On the basis of molecular studies that have measured DNA variation directly, we propose a Fourth Law of Behavior Genetics: “A typical human behavioral trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each of which accounts for a very small percentage of the behavioral variability.”

GWAS of 126,559 Individuals Identifies Genetic Variants Associated with Educational Attainment

Paper Conference paper | By Daniel Benjamin, David Cesarini, Philipp Koellinger, and Peter Visscher | May 2013

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment was conducted in a discovery sample of 101,069 individuals and a replication sample of 25,490. Three independent single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are genome-wide significant (rs9320913, rs11584700, rs4851266), and all three replicate.

Featuring this expert

Why the Dismal Science Cares About Happiness

Video Featuring Daniel Benjamin | Jul 31, 2019

Economics is often thought of as emotion-less, but Daniel Benjamin argues for happiness as a vital indicator