دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله پایداری و ناهمگونی در کارآفرینی (نشریه الزویر 2011)

پایداری و ناهمگونی در کارآفرینی: تجزیه و تحلیل نظری بازی تکاملی

Persistence and heterogeneity in entrepreneurship: An evolutionary game theoretic analysis

Abstract

Studies show that countries exhibit a relatively stable level of entrepreneurial activity. To account for this fact, we adopt an evolutionary game theoretic approach. Based upon the analysis of games that capture essential features of the entrepreneurial phenomenon, we ascertain conditions under which evolutionary stable equilibria will be played by a population consisting of agents who engage in entrepreneurship and agents who do not. We show that entrepreneurship may persist even without assuming strategic complementarities or group selection. Lastly, we explain how information about equilibrium payoffs to self- and paid employment could help address the question of whether entrepreneurs differ from other economic agents.

1 Executive summary

Empirical studies suggest that despite cross-sectional and longitudinal fluctuations, the prevalence of entrepreneurial activity may be a structural characteristic of a country (Minniti et al., 2005; Acs et al., 2004). Furthermore, substantial evidence demonstrates that risky and safe behavior, innovation and imitation, and more specifically, paid and self-employment have coexisted throughout history (Baumol, 1990; Parker, 2004). These facts raise the question of which individual behaviors could lead societies to exhibit a relatively stable proportion of people who start businesses and individuals who do not.

Several frameworks have been developed to address this question. These frameworks usually rely upon at least one of the following three assumptions. The most common among them is the supposition that entrepreneurs differ from other economic agents in terms of their preferences, endowments, personality traits or cognition (Busenitz and Barney, 1997; Casson, 1982; Holmes and Schmitz, 1990; Jovanovic, 1982; Kihlstrom and Laffont, 1979; Lucas, 1978; Knight, 1921; Schumpeter, 1934). Depending on the model, entrepreneurs may be more willing to take risks, more skilled or more confident than other economic agents. Second in prevalence is the assumption that entrepreneurial activities entail positive externalities, a premise motivated by the fact that other economic agents benefit from entrepreneurs when the latter take the risk of exploring unknown paths and exploiting novel opportunities (Bolton and Harris, 1999). Less common but still implicit in many arguments is the presumption that entrepreneurs provide a competitive advantage to the societies in which they interact and that this explains the survival of cognitive biases like overconfidence, which are usually ascribed to entrepreneurs (Bernardo and Welch, 2001).

Undeniably, these assumptions focus on crucial aspects of entrepreneurship. We nevertheless argue that in order to enhance our understanding of the entrepreneurial phenomenon, one must ask whether we need to assume heterogeneous agents (in terms of either their preferences toward risk or their personality traits), positive externalities and/or group selection to justify the fact that entrepreneurship coexists with paid employment. The reason for this is twofold. First, there is no conclusive evidence of the existence of a well defined set of psychological traits distinguishing entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs (Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986; Gartner, 1988; Parker, 2004), and secondly, abundant examples demonstrate that entrepreneurial undertakings occur even when they fail to improve the absolute and the relative well being of societies. Current models of entrepreneurship make these assumptions, and we lack a theory that explains why entrepreneurship persists in their absence. To address this issue, we adopt an evolutionary game theoretic perspective, focusing on the competitive aspect of the entrepreneurial phenomenon rather than focusing on its positive externalities and considering individual fitness instead of group selection.

Evolutionary game theory is concerned with the evolution of behaviors whose payoffs are frequency-dependent. Consistent with myopic decision-making at the individual level, evolutionary game theory assumes the relative growth of behaviors that are performing better than average at a particular moment. This is a suitable assumption in modeling entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs usually lack the necessary information to predict the strategies of other economic agents and to optimize their performance accordingly (Busenitz and Barney, 1997). Evolutionary games are suitable for addressing several questions, such as under which conditions long-run aggregate behavior will settle into some equilibrium, and when certain behaviors will become extinct.

The contributions of this article are threefold. First, we show that both self-employment and paid employment will coexist in equilibrium as long as not only the potential gains but also the potential losses of entrepreneurship are high enough. Second, we show that entrepreneurship will persist under more stringent conditions, namely the absence of strategic complementarities and individual, as opposed to group, selection. Third, we demonstrate that it is not necessary to assume entrepreneurial and nonentrepreneurial personality traits to justify the coexistence of paid and self-employment. In our framework, individuals do not even need to earn idiosyncratic payoffs for both occupations to coexist. Of course, economic agents may differ in terms of their abilities. If so, they will choose strategies based on their particular skills and earn idiosyncratic payoffs. On these grounds, the conclusion is that the mere observation of the coexistence of self- and paid employment is not sufficient to demonstrate that economic agents are bound to choose occupations because of idiosyncratic traits or skills. To disentangle this empirical matter, our framework suggests comparing the average earnings of entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. The relevant empirical evidence is mixed, but it suggests that, at least in the US, the earnings differentials are not large. It would therefore be premature to reject the hypothesis that entrepreneurs and other economic agents are homogeneous.