This paper compares and appraises three principal, contemporary theories of entrepreneurial decision making – neoclassical, Austrian and behavioral. We employ theory appraisal criteria made available in Fritz Machlup’s (1967) celebrated article on alternative theories of the firm. The paper considers theories that treat sequences of behavior by which individual entrepreneurs reach decisions on two levels: the discovery of profit opportunities and their exploitation. We also consider how each theory characterizes the entrepreneur’s decision making process by contrast with the posited behavior of other economic agents. Austrian theory is suited to explaining novel, adventurous behavior at the discovery stage. The algorithm for opportunity exploitation in both the neoclassical and Austrian approaches is a single-repertoire, optimization rule. Neoclassical theory is situated in frictionless, atomistic Walrasian markets and emphasizes mathematical tractability. Austrian and behavioral theories conceive entrepreneurial acts taking place in market processes understood as complex institutional phenomena. There are strong theoretical complementarities between Austrian and behavioral approaches; both approaches value descriptive accuracy, though the behavioralists place more weight on operational tractability. Austrians and behavioralists share an interest in heuristics; they emphasize the role of prior micro-level knowledge at the discovery stage. Therefore more collaborative research in future between Austrians and behavioralists should prove fruitful. Copyright Springer 2006
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Did you know? You can include your works in the database easily by uploading them on the Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA) if you do not have access to an institutional RePEc archive.