TY - UNPB

T1 - Are nascent entrepreneurs jacks-of-all-trades?

T2 - a test of Lazear's theory of entrepreneurship with German data

AU - Wagner, Joachim

PY - 2003

Y1 - 2003

N2 - In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-emlployment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. The intuition behind this proposition is that entrepreneurs must have sufficient knowledge in a variety of areas to put together the many ingredients needed for survival and success in a business, while for paid employees it suffices and pays to be a specialist in the field demanded by the job taken. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing Lazear's hypothesis using a large recent representative sample of the German population. The empirical estimation takes the rare events nature of becoming a nascent entrepreneur and the regional stratification of the sample into account. The results illustrate the statistical significance and economic importance of the 'jack-of-all-trades' theory.

AB - In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-emlployment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. The intuition behind this proposition is that entrepreneurs must have sufficient knowledge in a variety of areas to put together the many ingredients needed for survival and success in a business, while for paid employees it suffices and pays to be a specialist in the field demanded by the job taken. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by empirically testing Lazear's hypothesis using a large recent representative sample of the German population. The empirical estimation takes the rare events nature of becoming a nascent entrepreneur and the regional stratification of the sample into account. The results illustrate the statistical significance and economic importance of the 'jack-of-all-trades' theory.

KW - Economics

KW - Unternehmensgründung

KW - rare events logit

KW - Germany

KW - jack-of-all-trades theory

KW - entrepreneurship

M3 - Working papers

T3 - Arbeitsbericht

BT - Are nascent entrepreneurs jacks-of-all-trades?

PB - Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Lüneburg

CY - Lüneburg

ER -