Is running a marathon like running a business? Identifying occupational differences in overconfidence using long-distance running data

Hayk Amirkhanyan, Michał Krawczyk () and Maciej Wilamowski
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Michał Krawczyk: University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences
Maciej Wilamowski: University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences

No 2022-03, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: It is often claimed that certain career choices, notably running a business, are associated with excessive confidence in own capabilities. Such a link could partly explain e.g., the surprisingly high number of unsuccessful start-ups. We verify these claims in a sample of marathon runners. We take starting too fast and then slowing down in a marathon race as a proxy for overconfidence. In a sample of over 50 thousand runners, we match marathon pacing data with job titles that are partly reported by the runners themselves and partly identified by us (using runners’ names, years of birth, and places of residence to find their personal web sites, social media profiles etc., whenever possible). We observe that job categories have a significant impact on slowing down (as a proxy for overconfidence), also when we control for observable demographic factors (such as age, gender, place of residence). In particular, entrepreneurs tend to be more overconfident than the general population.

Keywords: overconfidence; slowdown; occupational differences; gender differences; selection into professions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 J16 J24 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-pay and nep-spo
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https://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/download_file/1241/0 First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2022-03

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