Dear professors, colleagues and students, we would like to invite you to the second session of the Socioeconomic Research Seminar organized by the Institute for Health Economics and Policy. The seminar takes place at Tuesday, 03. November, at 18.00h, via Microsoft Teams (see the link below), accessible at 17.45h. Access to the session: Microsoft Teams<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3a3d7f0abb06a147d39345ba1ae669d183%40thread.tacv2/1602767708571?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%220504f721-d451-402b-b884-381428559e39%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%220fabf9e4-b2b6-441f-9792-1b213451554b%22%7d> Hans JLW van Kippersluis<https://www.eur.nl/people/hans-van-kippersluis> (Erasmus School of Economics) will present: Dynamic complementarity in skill production: evidence from genes and birth order ABSTRACT: Genetic variation is randomly distributed between siblings while, conditional on family size, birth order creates exogenous variation in the environment that siblings are exposed to. Previous studies have consistently shown a negative relationship between birth order and educational attainment, mainly thought to be driven by parental time investments. Thus investigating whether genetic endowments interact with birth order in a sample of siblings enables us to shed light on how a natural reduction in the parental time constraint differentially affects children with different genetic endowments. Our within-family analysis first confirms the long-held conjecture that genetic endowments do not differ across birth parity. Hence, by definition, birth order effects must be due to ensuing environmental influences. Our key finding is that birth order and genetic endowments interact: being first born shows a positive interaction with higher genetic endowments for education. As such, these results provide support for dynamic complementary in skill production: initial skills raise the productivity of later investments, with children with higher (genetic) endowments benefitting the most from parental investments. Hans van Kippersluis is a Professor of Applied Economics. He has used both theoretical and empirical approaches to study topics in health and human capital formation: (i) how do different components of human capital (e.g., education, health) relate to each other and interact with each other (e.g., why are higher educated individuals healthier than lower educated? Why do rich people smoke less?); (ii) What are the genetic and environmental determinants of education and health?, and (iii) What is the effect of public policies on education and health? Current projects include investigating the interplay between genes and the environment in producing inequalities in education and health outcomes, developing and testing incentives to encourage healthy behavior, and investigating the impact of public policies on health, education and labor supply decisions. Feel free to forward this email to everybody else who might be interested. For more information regarding the Socioeconomic Research Seminar visit https://www.wu.ac.at/soziooekonomie/socioeconomics-research-seminar Best regards