Born Entrepreneur? Adolescents' Personality Characteristics and Self-Employment in Adulthood

Jutta Viinikainen, Guido Heineck, Petri Böckerman (), Mirka Hintsanen, Olli Raitakari () and Jaakko Pehkonen ()
Additional contact information
Mirka Hintsanen: University of Oulu
Olli Raitakari: University of Turku
Jaakko Pehkonen: Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics

No 9805, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Is there an entrepreneurial personality and does it appear early in life? We provide a new answer on this question by using the so-called Type A behavior traits (Aggression, Leadership, Responsibility, and Eagerness-Energy), measured in childhood and adolescence, and examining their relationship to self-employment propensity in adulthood. Using data from the Young Finns Study linked to the Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data and the Longitudinal Population Census of Statistics, our results show that the early-life Leadership-dimension is significantly associated with a higher likelihood 1) of becoming self-employed later in life and 2) of being more successful as an entrepreneur, as approximated by sales. Our results also reinforce the prior evidence on the intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Type A behavior; personality; self-employment; entrepreneurship; intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2017, 8, 9-12

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Working Paper: Born entrepreneur? Adolescents' personality characteristics and self-employment in adulthood (2016)
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