nto anequivalent ability to consider, within the microeconomicmodels, the specific role of entrepreneurship.
According to Baumol (1968), this is notsurprising in that within the cast of the neoclassicalfirm there is no room for the entrepreneur,
the stage being wholly occupied by mechanicalprofit-maximizing managers: “The theoretical firmis entrepreneurless – the Prince of Denmark hasbeen expunged from the discussion of Hamlet”
(Baumol, 1965, p. 66).A tangible sign of the problematic relationship
Revealing Entrepreneurial Talent Francesco Ferrante*Final version accepted on July 29, 2003Università di Cassino
Facoltà di Economiavia Mazzaroppi 03043Cassino (FR)Italia
E-mail: Business
Economics (2005) 25: 159-174
DOI 10.1007/s11187-003-6448-6© Springer 2005between neoclassical theory of the firm and theentrepreneur is that, in the vast majority of laboreconomics text-books, the occupational choicebetween self-employment and wage labor is leftout, as if it were a residual that does not warrantinquiry.
As a result, the formal analysis of the fundamentalfactors determining occupational choiceand the resulting supply of entrepreneurs3 is
quite recent, rooted in the work of Lucas (1978)and Kihlstrom and Laffont (1979). Building onprevious analyses, these authors explain why
individuals become employees or self-employedby stressing either their function of coordinator/supervisor (Lucas) or of risk-bearer (Kihlstrom
and Laffont). In the context of the latter interpretations,entrepreneurial talent is measured eitherin terms of productivity of individuals in coordinatingand supervising employees within a firm or,alternatively, in terms of risk aversion. Along thesame lines as Lucas, interesting insights on thelinks between the productivity of managerial timeand the supply ofentrepreneurship are found in Oi(1983) and Otani (1996).From a different perspective, Jovanovic (1989)and Evans and Jovanovic (1989) develop a modelofentrepreneurial choice with liquidity constraintbased on the idea that the choice of becoming anemployee or an entrepreneur depends on wealth.Here the incentive to become an entrepreneur has
more to do with objective conditions, i.e. theability to finance a business venture, than withsubjective qualities of individuals. In such a context,the interest in and the practicability of measuresof entrepreneurial talent are questionable.Due to the lack of a common conceptual framework,the available empirical evidence is scattered
and, in general, not particularly strong. The mainissues investigated have been the demographiccharacteristics and socio-economic backgroundof the self-employed vis à vis the employees, andthe factors affecting the probability of survivalof businesses run by the former4 (Evans and
Leighton, 1989; Schiller and Crewson, 1997).Other empirical studies5 directly investigate thecontribution of entrepreneurial characteristics
(education, experience, family background) to aset of performance indicators such as firms’growth and innovation (Roper, 1998; Storey, 1994;Barkham et al., 1996).
Building on Lucas (1978) and Kihlstrom andLaffont (1979) and Gifford (1992), in this paperI argue that the allocation of working time by
self-employed persons in activities characterizedby differing returns may reveal their entrepreneurialtalent. Just as actual consumption choicesshould reveal people’s preferences, the amount ofworking time spent by self-employed persons inactivitie
本论文由英语论文网提供整理,提供论文代写,英语论文代写,代写论文,代写英语论文,代写留学生论文,代写英文论文,留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。