IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20110165.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

It's the Opportunity Cost, stupid! How Self-Employment responds to Financial Incentives of Return, Risk and Skew

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Berkhout

    (RIGO)

  • Joop Hartog

    (University of Amsterdam)

  • Mirjam van Praag

    (University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

There is no robust empirical support for the effect of financial incentives on the decision to work in selfemploymentrather than as a wage earner. In the literature, this is seen as a puzzle. We offer a focus on theopportunity cost, i.e. the wages given up as an employee. Information on income from self-employment is ofinferior quality and this is not just a problem for the outside researcher, it is an imminent problem of theindividual considering self-employment. We also argue that it is not only the location of an incomedistribution that matters and that dispersion and (a)symmetry should not be ignored. We predict that highermean, lower variance and higher skew in the wage distribution in a particular employment segment reducethe inclination to prefer self-employment above employee status. Using a sample of 56,000 recent graduatesfrom a Dutch college or university, grouped in approximately 120 labor market segments, we find significantsupport for these propositions. The results survive various robustness checks on specifications andassumptions.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Berkhout & Joop Hartog & Mirjam van Praag, 2011. "It's the Opportunity Cost, stupid! How Self-Employment responds to Financial Incentives of Return, Risk and Skew," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-165/3, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20110165
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/11165.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joop Hartog & Ada Ferrer‐i‐Carbonell & Nicole Jonker, 2002. "Linking Measured Risk Aversion to Individual Characteristics," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 3-26.
    2. Joseph Golec & Maurry Tamarkin, 1998. "Bettors Love Skewness, Not Risk, at the Horse Track," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(1), pages 205-225, February.
    3. Barton H. Hamilton, 2000. "Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns to Self-Employment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 604-631, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arvid Raknerud & Mirjam van Praag, 2014. "The entrepreneurial earnings puzzle. Evidence from matched person-firm data," Discussion Papers 789, Statistics Norway, Research Department.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Santos-Pinto, Luís & Astebro, Thomas & Mata, José, 2009. "Preference for Skew in Lotteries: Evidence from the Laboratory," MPRA Paper 17165, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Cho, In Soo & Orazem, Peter, 2011. "Risk Aversion or Risk Management?: How Measures of Risk Aversion Affect Firm Entry and Firm Survival," Staff General Research Papers Archive 34162, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    4. Thomas Åstebro & José Mata & Luís Santos-Pinto, 2015. "Skewness seeking: risk loving, optimism or overweighting of small probabilities?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 78(2), pages 189-208, February.
    5. Covas, Francisco, 2006. "Uninsured idiosyncratic production risk with borrowing constraints," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2167-2190, November.
    6. Checchi, Daniele & Visser, Jelle & van de Werfhorst, Herman G., 2007. "Inequality and Union Membership: The Impact of Relative Earnings Position and Inequality Attitudes," IZA Discussion Papers 2691, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    8. Becker, Sascha & Hvide, Hans V, 2013. "Do entrepreneurs matter?," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 109, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    9. Mikko Leppämäki & Vesa Kanniainen, 2000. "Entrepreneurship in a Unionised Economy," CESifo Working Paper Series 379, CESifo.
    10. Rachel G. Childers, 2011. "Being One'S Own Boss: How Does Risk Fit In?," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 56(1), pages 48-58, May.
    11. Milo Bianchi, 2012. "Financial Development, Entrepreneurship, and Job Satisfaction," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 273-286, February.
    12. Michele Dell'Era & Luis Santos-Pinto, 2011. "Entrepreneurial Overconfidence, Self-Financing and Capital Market Efficiency," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 11.06, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie, revised Nov 2012.
    13. Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Matthieu Lequien & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2017. "Tax Simplicity and Heterogeneous Learning," NBER Working Papers 24049, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus & Köster, Mats, 2017. "Local thinking and skewness preferences," DICE Discussion Papers 248, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    15. Hårsman, Björn & Mattsson, Lars-Göran, 2019. "Reconsidering the returns to entrepreneurship: Applying a modified version of Lazear’s occupational choice model," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 478, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    16. Hans K. Hvide & Benjamin F. Jones, 2018. "University Innovation and the Professor's Privilege," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1860-1898, July.
    17. Poschke, Markus, 2013. "The Decision to Become an Entrepreneur and the Firm Size Distribution: A Unifying Framework for Policy Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 7757, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Lex Borghans & Angela Lee Duckworth & James J. Heckman & Bas ter Weel, 2008. "The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    19. Przemyslaw Zbierowski, 2015. "Positive Entrepreneurship: Antecedents and Outcomes of Entrepreneurship within Positive Organizational Scholarship (Przedsiebiorczosc pozytywna – przyczyny i rezultaty przedsiebiorczosci z zakresu poz," Problemy Zarzadzania, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 13(56), pages 38-54.
    20. Keller, Godfrey & Novák, Vladimír & Willems, Tim, 2019. "A note on optimal experimentation under risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 476-487.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    entrepreneurship; self-employment; wage-employment; income distribution; income risk; income skew; income variance; occupational choice; labor market entry; labor market segments; opportunity cost;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20110165. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.