Learning entrepreneurship as an employee

Asuyama Yoko

No 860, IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO)

Abstract: Most entrepreneurs learn entrepreneurial skills while working as employees. Thus, em ployees’ opportunities to learn entrepreneurial skills are expected to substantially inf luence the economy’sentrepreneurship rate and entrepreneurial performance. However, previous studies have assessed such learning opportunities using indirect, rough measurements. This study utilizes a more direct and comprehensive measure. I first analyze entrepreneurs’ tasks by using information on 47 tasks from 31 countries and find that entrepreneurs perform more autonomous and diverse tasks, financial and managerial tasks, and fewer clerical tasks than employees. Next, using individual-level data from 23 countries in 2012–2017, I demonstrate that employees’ greater learning opportunities for entrepreneurial tasks increase individuals’ self-perceived entrepreneurial skills and their probability of becoming an entrepreneur. These relationships are generally robust to alternative learning opportunity indices, instrumental variable estimations, omitted variable bias, and learning-environment-level regressions. My bound estimates imply that a 1-st andard-deviation increase in an employee’s opportunities to learn entrepreneurial tasks in creases the probability of an individual becoming an entrepreneur by 0.5–1.5 percentage points, which is equivalent to 4%–12% of the mean entrepreneurship rate. By contrast, having more opportunities to learn entrepreneurial tasks does not result in a higher level of employment or innovativeness in entrepreneurs’ businesses.

Keywords: Entrepreneur|Entrepreneurial; skills|Entrepreneurship|GEM|PIAAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 M13 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in IDE Discussion Paper = IDE Discussion Paper, No. 860. 2022-09

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.ide.go.jp/record/53530/files/IDP000860_001.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

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:jet:dpaper:dpaper860

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publication Office, IDE 3-2-2 Wakaba, Mihama-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba 261-8545 JAPAN
http://www.ide.go.jp/English/Publish/Order

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michitaka Imamitsu ().