Are nascent entrepreneurs jacks-of-all-trades? a test of Lazear's theory of entrepreneurship with German data

Research output: Working paperWorking 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 languageEnglish
Place of PublicationLüneburg
PublisherInstitut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Lüneburg
Number of pages12
Publication statusPublished - 2003

    Research areas

  • Economics - rare events logit, Germany, jack-of-all-trades theory, entrepreneurship

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