Personality Traits, Self-Employment, and Professions

Michael Fritsch (m.fritsch@uni-jena.de) and Alina Rusakova (alina.rusakova@uni-jena.de)
Additional contact information
Alina Rusakova: School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Postal: Carl-Zeiß-Straße 3, 07743 Jena, Germany
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alina Sorgner

No 2010-075, Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

Abstract: We investigate the effect of broad personality traits-the Big Five-on an individual's decision to become self- employed. In particular, we test an overall indicator of the entrepreneurial personality. Since we find that the level of self-employment varies considerably across professions, we also perform the analysis for different types of professions, namely, those classified as being in the "creative class" as compared to the noncreative class. The analysis is based on micro data for individuals of the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP). We find a significant association between personality traits and the propensity be become self-employed. However, the strength of this link is fairly weak and differs across professions, indicating an important effect of an individual's profession on his or her decision to run an own business.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; self-employment; personality traits; the Big Five; professions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 L26 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-11-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-ent
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Working Paper: Personality Traits, Self-Employment, and Professions (2010)
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