TY - JOUR

T1 - Are nascent entrepreneurs 'Jacks-of-all-trades' ?

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

AU - Wagner, Joachim

N1 - Funding Information: Research for this paper was done as part of the project Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor (REM) Germany financially supported by the German Research Foundation under grants number WA 610/2-1 and WA 610/2-2. This project is conducted jointly with Rolf Sternberg (University of Cologne, Germany) who is supported with grants number STE 628/71 and STE 628/7-2.

PY - 2006/11/10

Y1 - 2006/11/10

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-employment 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-employment 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 - Gender and Diversity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33751120173&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/00036840500427783

DO - 10.1080/00036840500427783

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 38

SP - 2415

EP - 2419

JO - Applied Economics

JF - Applied Economics

SN - 0003-6846

IS - 20

ER -