title: 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 1199 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.
authors.affiliation: Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Electronic address: F.Greene@bham.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Francis J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Greene
authors.affiliation: Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, United Kingdom. Electronic address: L.Han@surrey.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: Discipline of Medicine, University of Adelaide, Australia. Electronic address: sean.martin@adelaide.edu.au.
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Surrey Business School, University of Surrey, United Kingdom. Electronic address: Song.Zhang@surrey.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Song
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Discipline of Medicine, University of Adelaide, Australia. Electronic address: gary.wittert@adelaide.edu.au.
authors.forename: Gary
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wittert
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001315:Australia; D004651:Employment / Q000379:methods*; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007328:Insulin / Q000097:blood; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013739:Testosterone / Q000096:biosynthesis*
chemical_list: D007328:Insulin; D013739:Testosterone
keywords: Hormones; Labor markets; Self-employment; Testosterone