Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics

Thomas  Astebro; Holger  Herz; Ramana  Nanda; Roberto A. Weber

Article | Journal of Economic Perspectives

Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics

by Thomas Astebro, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda and Roberto A. Weber

Abstract

There is a growing body of evidence that many entrepreneurs seem to enter and persist in entrepreneurship despite earning low risk-adjusted returns. This has lead to attempts to provide explanations—using both standard economic theory and behavioral economics—for why certain individuals may be attracted to such an apparently unprofitable activity. Drawing on research in behavioral economics, in the sections that follow, we review three sets of possible interpretations for understanding the empirical facts related to the entry into, and persistence in, entrepreneurship. Differences in risk aversion provide a plausible and intuitive interpretation of entrepreneurial activity. In addition, a growing literature has begun to highlight the potential importance of overconfidence in driving entrepreneurial outcomes. Such a mechanism may appear at face value to work like a lower level of risk aversion, but there are clear conceptual differences—in particular, overconfidence likely arises from behavioral biases and misperceptions of probability distributions. Finally, nonpecuniary taste-based factors may be important in motivating both the decisions to enter into and to persist in entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Personal Characteristics; Attitudes; Behavior;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Astebro, Thomas, Holger Herz, Ramana Nanda, and Roberto A. Weber. "Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics." Journal of Economic Perspectives 28, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 49–70.

We use the construction of India's Golden Quadrangle (GQ) central highway network, together with comprehensive loan data drawn from the Reserve Bank of India, to investigate the interaction between infrastructure development and financial sector depth. We identify a disproportionate increase in loan count and average loan size in districts along the GQ highway network using stringent specifications with industry and district fixed effects. Our results hold in straight-line IV frameworks and are not present in “placebo tests” with another highway that was planned to be upgraded at the same time as GQ but subsequently delayed. Importantly, however, results are concentrated in districts with stronger initial financial development, suggesting that while financing does respond to large infrastructure investments and help spur real economic outcomes, initial financial sector development might play an important role in determining where real activity will grow.

Exploiting random assignment of judges to panels at Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition (NVC) between 2000 and 2015, we find that exposure to more venture capitalist (VC) judges increases male participants’ chances of starting a VC-backed startup after HBS much more than this exposure increases female participants’ chances. A survey suggests this is in part because male participants more often proactively reach out to VC judges after the NVC. Our results suggest that networking frictions are an important reason men benefit more than women from exposure to VCs. Such frictions can help explain part of the gender gap in entrepreneurship and also have implications for how to design networking opportunities to facilitate financing of the best (rather than just the best networked) ideas.

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Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics

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