Are nascent entrepreneurs jacks-of-all-trades? a test of Lazear's theory of entrepreneurship with German data
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Lüneburg: Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Lüneburg, 2003. (Arbeitsbericht; No. 295).
Research output: Working paper › Working papers
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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 -