David Hugh-Jones

I'm an associate professor in the School of Economics at the University of East Anglia. My PhD was from the University of Essex in Political Science. My interests include culture, social norms, honesty, genoeconomics and my dog Roly.

• Email: davidhughjones@gmail.com

• Twitter: @davidhughjones

• Substack: https://wyclif.substack.com

• UEA web page

• Google Scholar profile

Publications

• Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain (with Abdel Abdellaoui, Kathryn E Kemper, Yan Holtz, Michel G Nivard, Laura Veul, Loic Yengo, Brendan P Zietsch, Timothy M Frayling, Naomi Wray, Jian Yang, Karin JH Verweij, and Peter M Visscher). 2019. Nature Human Behaviour. Preprint.

  • Migrants from coalfields take DNA as well as talent with them (The Economist)

  • Brain drain is carrying our clever genes south (The Times)

  • British industrial regions suffer ‘gene drain’ with the healthier and more academically gifted moving away (Daily Telegraph)

  • Inequality now extends to people’s DNA (The Conversation)

• True Lies: Comment on Garbarino, Slonim and Villeval (2018). 2019. Journal of the Economic Science Association. Github site. R package.

• Humans reciprocate by discriminating against group peers (with Itay Ron and Ro'i Zultan). 2019. Evolution and Human Behavior.

• Signaling by signature: The weight of international opinion and ratification of treaties by domestic veto players (with Hugh Ward and Karolina Milewicz). 2018. Political Science Research and Methods.

• Intergroup revenge: a laboratory experiment (with Martin Leroch). 2017. Homo Economicus.

• The logic of costly punishment reversed: expropriation of free-riders and outsiders (with Carlo Perroni). 2017. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

• Assortative mating on educational attainment leads to genetic spousal resemblance for polygenic scores (with Karen Verweij, Beate St Pourcain and Abdel Abdellaoui). 2016. Intelligence.

• Honesty, beliefs about honesty and economic growth in 15 countries. 2016. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 127: 99–114.

• An experimental study on the incentives of the probabilistic serial mechanism (with Morimitsu Kurino and Christoph Vanberg). 2014. Games and Economic Behavior 87: 367–380.

• Why do crises go to waste? Fiscal austerity and public service reform. 2014. Public choice 158(1-2): 209-220.

• Reputation and Cooperation in Defense (with Ro'i Zultan). 2013. Journal of Conflict Resolution 57(2): 327-355

• Anonymous Rituals (with David Reinstein). 2012. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 81(2): 478-489.

• Motivations behind intergroup conflict: an experimental study of Greek students after the 2008 riots (with Alexia Katsanidou and Gerhard Riener). 2011. International Journal of Conflict and Violence 5:2.

• Explaining Institutional Change: Why Elected Politicians Implement Direct Democracy. 2011. In Creative Crises of Democracy, eds. de Jong and Gijsenbergh, Brussels: Peter Lang.

• Comment on David Sanders et al., 'Simulating the Effects of the Alternative Vote in the 2010 UK General Election'. 2011. Parliamentary Affairs 64:4.

• Constitutions and Policy Comparisons. 2009. Journal of Theoretical Politics 21(1): 25-61.

• Sophisticated Voting on Competing Ballot Measures: Spatial Theory and Evidence. 2010. British Journal of Political Science 40(2): 399-418.

Working Papers

These papers (possibly in older versions) may also be available to download from ResearchGate or elsewhere.

• Where do fairness preferences come from? Norm transmission in a teen friendship network (with Jinnie Ooi)

People’s preferences about the fair distribution of resources vary within and between different popula- tions, and this affects many economic and political outcomes. We argue that a source of these differences is the social transmission of fairness norms from peers during adolescence. We ran an experiment on transmission of fairness norms in a friendship network of 11-15 year olds. Observing others’ choices affects young people’s fairness norms, as expressed in both their own choices and the attitudes they express. Our results show how young people can adopt redistributive norms via the social influence of their peer group. We also examine how the strength of social influence varies with friendship status and network position.

• Human capital drives natural selection in contemporary humans (with Abdel Abdellaoui)

Natural selection has been documented in contemporary humans, but little is known about the mechanisms behind it. We test for natural selection through the association between 33 polygenic scores and fertility, across two generations, using data from UK Biobank (N = 409,629 British subjects with European ancestry). Consistently over time, polygenic scores associated with lower (higher) earnings, education and health are selected for (against). Selection effects are concentrated among lower SES groups, younger parents, people with more lifetime sexual partners, and people not living with a partner. The direction of natural selection is reversed among older parents (22+), or after controlling for age at first live birth. These patterns are in line with economic theories of fertility, in which higher earnings may either increase or decrease fertility via income and substitution effects in the labour market. Studying natural selection can help us understand the genetic architecture of health outcomes: we find evidence in modern day Great Britain for multiple natural selection pressures that vary between subgroups in the direction and strength of their effects, that are strongly related to the socio-economic system, and that may contribute to health inequalities across income groups.