Entrepreneurship: Can the Jack-of-All-Trades Attitude be Aquired?

Olmo Silva

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Entrepreneurs are believed to be the ultimate engine of modern economic systems. Yet, the study ofentrepreneurship suffers from the lack of consensus on the most crucial question: what makes anentrepreneur? A recent theory developed by Edward Lazear suggests that individuals mastering abalanced set of talents across different fields, i.e. the Jacks-of-All-Trades (JATs), have a highprobability of becoming entrepreneurs. In this paper, I investigate whether the JAT Attitude is just aninnate ability or a skill that can be trained to enhance individuals' chances of becoming entrepreneurs.Using panel techniques, I show that changes in the spread of knowledge across different fields do notincrease the probability of becoming an entrepreneur. This suggests that, if the JAT Attitude mattersfor entrepreneurship, it is an innate and time-invariant individual attribute, rather than a skill that canbe acquired.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Occupational Choice; Skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-12
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0665

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