IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/06-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The economic consequences of being left-handed: some sinister results

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin Denny

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College Dublin)

  • Vincent O'Sullivan

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies)

Abstract

This paper provides the first estimates of the effects of handedness on hourly earnings. Augmenting a conventional earnings equation with an indicator of left handedness shows there is a well determined positive effect on male earnings with non-manual workers enjoying a slightly larger premium. These results are inconsistent with the view that left-handers in general are in some sense handicapped either innately or through experiencing a world geared towards right-handers. The results for females however reveal the opposite, left-handed females are paid significantly less. This is consistent with some psychological evidence which suggests that left-hander males have particular talents such as enhanced creativity and some evidence on brain morphology which also suggests advantages for left-handed males.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin Denny & Vincent O'Sullivan, 2006. "The economic consequences of being left-handed: some sinister results," IFS Working Papers W06/07, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:06/07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0607.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coren, S., 1989. "Left-handedness and accident-related injury risk," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 79(8), pages 1040-1041.
    2. Christopher S. Ruebeck & Joseph E. Harrington, Jr & Robert Moffitt, 1997. "Handedness and Earnings," Economics Working Paper Archive 533, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics, revised Jun 2004.
    3. Carneiro, Pedro & Heckman, James J., 2003. "Human Capital Policy," IZA Discussion Papers 821, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2006. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521871525, November.
    5. Kevin Denny & Vincent O’ Sullivan, 2007. "The Economic Consequences of Being Left-Handed: Some Sinister Results," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(2).
    6. Erik Plug & Peter Berkhout, 2004. "Effects of sexual preferences on earnings in the Netherlands," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 17(1), pages 117-131, February.
    7. Melissa Osborne & Herbert Gintis & Samuel Bowles, 2001. "The Determinants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1137-1176, December.
    8. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2006. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521692083, November.
    9. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'Sullivan, 2004. "The economic consequences of being left-handed : some sinister results (version 2.0)," Working Papers 200422, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    10. Dearden, Lorraine, 1999. "The effects of families and ability on men's education and earnings in Britain1," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 551-567, November.
    11. Mueller, Gerrit & Plug, Erik, 2004. "Estimating the Effect of Personality on Male-Female Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 1254, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Lee, Lung-Fei, 1978. "Unionism and Wage Rates: A Simultaneous Equations Model with Qualitative and Limited Dependent Variables," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 19(2), pages 415-433, June.
    13. repec:ucn:wpaper:10197/171 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frijters, Paul & Johnston, David W. & Shah, Manisha & Shields, Michael A., 2008. "Early Child Development and Maternal Labor Force Participation: Using Handedness as an Instrument," IZA Discussion Papers 3537, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Paul Frijters & David Johnston & Manisha Shah & Michael Shields, 2013. "Intrahousehold Resource Allocation: Do Parents Reduce or Reinforce Child Ability Gaps?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(6), pages 2187-2208, December.
    3. David W. Johnston & Michael E. R. Nicholls & Manisha Shah & Michael A. Shields, 2013. "Handedness, health and cognitive development: evidence from children in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(4), pages 841-860, October.
    4. Kevin Denny & Wen Zhang, 2010. "In praise of ambidexterity: how a continuum of handedness predicts social adjustment," Working Papers 201019, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    5. Dennis Coates, 2017. "Returns to Handedness in Professional Hockey," Sports Economics, Management, and Policy, in: Bernd Frick (ed.), Breaking the Ice, pages 41-56, Springer.
    6. Fabio Mariani & Marion Mercier & Luca Pensieroso, 2023. "Left-handedness and economic development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 79-123, March.
    7. Marcello Sartarelli, 2016. "Handedness, Earnings, Ability and Personality. Evidence from the Lab," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-17, October.
    8. Alex Bryson & Bernd Frick & Rob Simmons, 2009. "The Returns to Scarce Talent: Footedness and Player Remuneration in European Soccer," CEP Discussion Papers dp0948, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Buser, Thomas & Cappelen, Alexander & Gneezy, Uri & Hoffman, Moshe & Tungodden, Bertil, 2021. "Competitiveness, gender and handedness," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    10. Johnston, David W. & Shah, Manisha & Shields, Michael A., 2007. "Handedness, Time Use and Early Childhood Development," IZA Discussion Papers 2752, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Kevin Denny, 2006. "Cognitive ability and hemispheric indecision : two surpluses and a deficit," Working Papers 200612, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    12. Thomas Buser, 2010. "Handedness predicts Social Preferences: Evidence connecting the Lab to the Field," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-119/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Kevin Denny & Vincent O’ Sullivan, 2007. "The Economic Consequences of Being Left-Handed: Some Sinister Results," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(2).
    14. Paul Frijters & David W. Johnston & Manisha Shah & Michael A. Shields, 2009. "To Work or Not to Work? Child Development and Maternal Labor Supply," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 97-110, July.
    15. Guber, Raphael, 2019. "Making it right? Social norms, handwriting and human capital," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 44-57.
    16. Hessels, Jolanda & Rietveld, Cornelius A. & van der Zwan, Peter, 2014. "Unraveling two myths about entrepreneurs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 435-438.
    17. David Johnston & Michael Nicholls & Manisha Shah & Michael Shields, 2009. "Nature’s experiment? Handedness and early childhood development," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 46(2), pages 281-301, May.
    18. Yi-Ting Huang & Sheng-Fang Su, 2018. "Motives for Instagram Use and Topics of Interest among Young Adults," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-12, August.
    19. Marcello Sartarelli, 2016. "Handedness, Ability, Earnings and Risk. Evidence from the Lab," Working Papers. Serie AD 2016-04, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    20. Alex Bryson & Bernd Frick & Rob Simmons, 2009. "The Returns to Scarce Talent: Footedness and Player Remuneration in European Soccer," CEP Discussion Papers dp0948, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    21. Buser, Thomas & Cappelen, Alexander & Gneezy, Uri & Hoffman, Moshe & Tungodden, Bertil, 2020. "Competitiveness, gender and handedness: a large- sample intercultural study," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 2/2020, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    22. Alex Bryson & Bernd Frick & Rob Simmons, 2013. "The Returns to Scarce Talent," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 14(6), pages 606-628, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'Sullivan, 2004. "The economic consequences of being left-handed : some sinister results (version 2.0)," Working Papers 200422, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    2. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    3. Paul Frijters & David W. Johnston & Manisha Shah & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Early Child Development and Maternal Labor Force Participation: Using Handedness as an Instrument," NCER Working Paper Series 27, National Centre for Econometric Research.
    4. Kevin Denny & Vincent O'sullivan, 2007. "Can education compensate for low ability? Evidence from British data," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(9), pages 657-660.
    5. Grochulski, Borys & Piskorski, Tomasz, 2010. "Risky human capital and deferred capital income taxation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 908-943, May.
    6. David W. Johnston & Michael E. R. Nicholls & Manisha Shah & Michael A. Shields, 2013. "Handedness, health and cognitive development: evidence from children in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 176(4), pages 841-860, October.
    7. Carmona, Guilherme & Fajardo, José, 2009. "Existence of equilibrium in common agency games with adverse selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 749-760, July.
    8. Dimitris Georgarakos & Giacomo Pasini, 2011. "Trust, Sociability, and Stock Market Participation," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 15(4), pages 693-725.
    9. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    10. Davis, John B., 2010. "Neuroeconomics: Constructing identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 574-583, December.
    11. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    12. Jidong Zhou, 2011. "Reference Dependence and Market Competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 1073-1097, December.
    13. Steven Berry & Alon Eizenberg & Joel Waldfogel, 2016. "Optimal product variety in radio markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(3), pages 463-497, August.
    14. Mattozzi, Andrea & Merlo, Antonio, 2008. "Political careers or career politicians?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 597-608, April.
    15. Arianna Degan & Antonio Merlo, 2006. "Do Voters Vote Sincerely?," PIER Working Paper Archive 06-008, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    16. Antonio Merlo & Vincenzo Galasso & Massimiliano Landi & Andrea Mattozzi, 2008. "the Labor Market of Italian Politicians, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 09-024, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 May 2009.
    17. Dengler, Sebastian & Prüfer, Jens, 2021. "Consumers' privacy choices in the era of big data," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 499-520.
    18. Helfrich, Magdalena & Herweg, Fabian, 2016. "Fighting collusion by permitting price discrimination," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 148-151.
    19. Alexei Alexandrov & Özlem Bedre-Defolie, 2014. "The Equivalence of Bundling and Advance Sales," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 259-272, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:06/07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.