The determinants of entrepreneurial energy in Europe03.12.08 - Flanders DC Kenniscentrum - Vlerick Campus Gent
Seminar by Roy Thurik
The theory of occupational choice is a well-known framework for studying self-employment decisions. In this context the roles of entrepreneurial abilities, risk attitudes and liquidity constraints as well as many other covariates have been investigated widely. This approach has two major shortcomings. A first shortcoming is that the self-employment decision is static: one chooses between self-employment and (un)employment. In reality there is a process in which people move through various engagement levels from never thinking about the self-employment option, to thinking about it, to taking steps (nascent entrepreneurship), to having a young business, to having an old business and dropping out. Each stage is assumed to have specific determining factors. A second shortcoming is that no discrimination is made between intentions and reality of the self-employment decision and their specific determinants. Again, the determinants of intentions and realization need not be identical. Eurobarometer data of various recent years allows a full study of all engagement levels. These data also allow a full study of the interplay between intentions and reality, i.e. latent and real entrepreneurship.