Exploiting opportunities at all cost? Entrepreneurial intent and externalities

Diemo Urbig, Utz Weitzel, Stephanie Rosenkranz and A. van Witteloostuijn

No 11-05, Working Papers from Utrecht School of Economics

Abstract: they exploit welfare-enhancing opportunities as it is assumed in several normative models? Do we need to prevent potential entrepreneurs from being destructive or are there intrinsic limits to harm others? We experimentally investigate how people with different entrepreneurial intent exploit risky investment opportunities that are associated with negative and positive externalities. We find that participants who consider entrepreneurship as a future occupation invest significantly less than others in destructive opportunities. Nevertheless, our results support prior evidence that the entrepreneurially talented invest more in destructive opportunities. The latter effect seems to be entrepreneurship-specific, because the investment behavior of the generally more talented does not differ from that of other participants. Taken together, our results suggest that people who are willing to exploit destructive opportunities do not only do this in private ventures, but also – and maybe even more so – in wage employment.

Keywords: Social Psychology; Entrepreneurship; Externalities; Laboratory; Individual Behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-exp
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: Exploiting opportunities at all cost? Entrepreneurial intent and externalities (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:use:tkiwps:1105

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