Experimentation and the Returns to Entrepreneurship
Review of Financial Studies
2016
open access
Previous studies have argued that entrepreneurs earn less and bear more risk than salaried workers with otherwise similar characteristics. In a simple model of entrepreneurship, I show that estimates of mean and variance of returns to entrepreneurship used by these previous studies are biased, as they fail to account for the option value of experimenting with new ideas. Using longitudinal data, I find patterns that are consistent with entrepreneurship as experimentation and returns to entrepreneurship that are more attractive than established by previous research. Received October 31, 2015; accepted February 24, 2016 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.
- DOI
- 10.1093/rfs/hhw019
- Volume
- 29 (9)
- Pages
- 2319-2340
- Language
- en
- Export
- BibTeX
- Sources
- openalex crossref