Are nascent entrepreneurs jacks-of-all-trades? a test of Lazear's theory of entrepreneurship with German data
Research output: Working paper › Working papers
Authors
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.
Original language | English |
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Place of Publication | Lüneburg |
Publisher | Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Lüneburg |
Number of pages | 12 |
Publication status | Published - 2003 |
- Economics - rare events logit, Germany, jack-of-all-trades theory, entrepreneurship