Stereotypes about Successful Entrepreneurs

Victor Lyonnet and Lea H. Stern
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Victor Lyonnet: Ohio State U
Lea H. Stern: U of Washington

Working Paper Series from Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics

Abstract: What comes to mind when thinking about a successful entrepreneur? Belief formation models suggest that what comes to mind is an oversimplified picture of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, i.e, stereotypes about successful entrepreneurs. Using French administrative data on 48,767 new firms, we show that some characteristics are stereotypical of success and have distributions that can generate miscalibrated beliefs. To illustrate how stereotypical thinking can lead to biased assessments, we report the discrepancies between the implied fraction of successful entrepreneurs under Bayesian vs. stereotypical thinking for several stereotypes. We discuss the consequences of stereotyping for venture capital allocation.

JEL-codes: D8 D83 G24 G41 J16 L26 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sbm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2023-04

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