Does skill balancing prepare for entrepreneurship? Testing the underlying assumption of the jack-of-all-trades view

Lorna Syme and Elisabeth Mueller

Applied Economics, 2022, vol. 54, issue 10, 1145-1161

Abstract: Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship predicts that individuals with a more balanced skill set are more likely to enter entrepreneurship. This relationship is often explained by either the investment or the endowment hypothesis. Both hypotheses describe skill balancing by those more interested in entrepreneurship per se. Previous studies which have attempted to determine the relative importance of both hypotheses have neglected the important question of whether balanced skills are actually productive in preparing an individual for entrepreneurship. We test this key underlying assumption by introducing a new measure of skill balancing that measures the breadth of skills directly and introduces exogenous skill balancing due to involuntary job changes. Results suggest that skill balancing through an external shock to an individual’s skill set also increases the probability of entering entrepreneurship. Thus, the underlying assumption of the jack-of-all-trades view that balanced skills support entrepreneurship can also be confirmed for exogenous skill balancing. We contribute to the discussion of whether entrepreneurs are born or made by suggesting that even individuals not predisposed to entrepreneurship can be productively prepared for it.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2021.1998322

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