Entrepreneurial Aspirations: Another Form of Job Search?

We study the labour market behaviour of employed individuals that have entrepreneurial aspirations in addition to aspirations to switch job. We analyze empirically these two “search processes” side-by-side and find that entrepreneurial aspirations and aspirations to switch job are relatively common. However, most employees are not engaged in both search processes, nor are the two processes alike: It is more difficult to empirically explain entrepreneurial aspirations than aspirations to switch job. Only few observable characteristics of the employed are related to both processes. Varied experience and job dissatisfaction are directly related to the probability of having entrepreneurial aspirations and aspirations to switch job, while job tenure is inversely related to them. Our analysis also contributes to the understanding of the process of transition from work into entrpreneurship: Employees who can experiment with new things in their present job, regard the content of their work important, and are dissatisfied with their superiors have more often entrepreneurial aspirations than others.

[1]  Henry S. Farber,et al.  Mobility and Stability: The Dynamics of Job Change in Labor Markets , 1998 .

[2]  Boyan Jovanovic,et al.  Firm-specific Capital and Turnover , 1979, Journal of Political Economy.

[3]  K. Sigman,et al.  A hobo syndrome? Mobility, wages, and job turnover , 2004 .

[4]  Boyan Jovanovic.  Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover , 1979, Journal of Political Economy.

[5]  G. Hundley,et al.  Why and When Are the Self‐Employed More Satisfied with Their Work? , 2001 .

[6]  A. Oswald,et al.  What Makes an Entrepreneur? , 1998, Journal of Labor Economics.

[7]  Paul A. Gompers,et al.  Entrepreneurial Spawning: Public Corporations and the Genesis of New Ventures, 1986-1999 , 2003 .

[8]  R. Thurik,et al.  Latent and Actual Entrepreneurship in Europe and the US: Some Recent Developments , 2005 .

[9]  David B. Audretsch,et al.  Entrepreneurship - A Survey of the Literature - , 2006 .

[10]  J. S. Cramer,et al.  Predicitive performance of the binary logit model in unbalanced samples , 1999 .

[11]  Andrew J. Oswald,et al.  Latent entrepreneurship across nations , 2001 .

[12]  C. Pissarides,et al.  Search Unemployment with On-the-job Search , 1994 .

[13]  Thomas Hellmann,et al.  When Do Employees Become Entrepreneurs? , 2007, Manag. Sci..

[14]  D. Holtz-eakin,et al.  Financial Capital, Human Capital, and the Transition to Self‐Employment: Evidence from Intergenerational Links , 1996, Journal of Labor Economics.

[15]  A. Ichino,et al.  Absenteeism and Employment Protection: Three Case Studies * , 2004 .

[16]  C. Ai,et al.  Interaction terms in logit and probit models , 2003 .

[17]  Michael D. Reilly,et al.  Competing models of entrepreneurial intentions , 2000 .

[18]  Jonathan Wadsworth,et al.  On-the-job search: Some empirical evidence from Britain , 1994 .

[19]  Scott Shane,et al.  Bringing individuals back in: the effects of career experience on new firm founding , 2003 .

[20]  D. Rivers,et al.  Limited Information Estimators and Exogeneity Tests for Simultaneous Probit Models , 1988 .

[21]  J Wagner,et al.  Testing Lazear's jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship with German micro data , 2002, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[22]  S. Parker.  The Economics of Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship , 2004 .

[23]  Edvard Johansson,et al.  Self-Employment and Liquidity Constraints: Evidence from Finland , 2000 .

[24]  Boyan Jovanovic,et al.  An Estimated Model of Entrepreneurial Choice under Liquidity Constraints , 1989, Journal of Political Economy.

[25]  Dale T. Mortensen,et al.  Chapter 15 Job search and labor market analysis , 1986 .

[26]  Jeffrey M. Wooldridge,et al.  Solutions Manual and Supplementary Materials for Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data , 2003 .

[27]  Matthias Benz,et al.  Entrepreneurship as a non-profit-seeking activity , 2009 .

[28]  Anna-Maija Lehto,et al.  Efficient, more efficient, exhausted : Findings of Finnish Quality of Work Life Surveys 1977–1997 , 1999 .

[29]  Barton H. Hamilton,et al.  Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns to Self‐Employment , 2000, Journal of Political Economy.

[30]  E. Lazear.  Balanced Skills and Entrepreneurship , 2004 .

[31]  D. Blau.  An Empirical Analysis of Employed and Unemployed Job Search Behavior , 1992 .

[32]  Douglas Holtz-Eakin,et al.  Sticking it Out: Entrepreneurial Survival and Liquidity Constraints , 1993, Journal of Political Economy.

[33]  B. Frey,et al.  Being independent raises happiness at work , 2004 .

[34]  Anh T. Le.  Empirical Studies of Self‐Employment , 1999 .

[35]  Andrew E. Clark,et al.  What really matters in a job? Hedonic measurement using quit data , 2001 .