Instant gratification: temporal discounting and self-employment

Marcus T. Wolfe () and Pankaj C. Patel ()
Additional contact information
Marcus T. Wolfe: University of Oklahoma
Pankaj C. Patel: Villanova University

Small Business Economics, 2017, vol. 48, issue 4, No 4, 882 pages

Abstract: Abstract Differences in temporal discounting could separate self-employed individuals from employees working for wages. Drawing on a sample of 13,198 individuals, from the 2012–2013 cross-sectional STEP Skills Measurement Survey, we find that higher temporal discounting is more positively associated with the likelihood of self-employment. We further find that younger individuals with higher temporal discounting are more likely to engage in self-employment. The association of lower socioeconomic status at a young age or those who experienced economic shocks at a young age with the likelihood of self-employment is only significant when interaction effects of temporal discounting and age are present in the model. Risk seeking is not associated with the likelihood of engagement in self-employment under higher discounting. These findings have implications for the self-employment literature as well as the literature on behavioral decision making.

Keywords: Temporal discounting; Self-employment; Early-life experiences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-016-9823-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:48:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s11187-016-9823-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-016-9823-9

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().