Seeking the Roots of Entrepreneurship: Insights from Behavioral Economics

摘要

Frank Knight (1921) proposed that we should not think of entrepreneurship as simply investment under risk, where decisions are made with respect to an objectively known distribution of returns. He argued that entrepreneurship in such a world would not require any particular skill and it would be inconceivable that entrepreneurs could earn rents simply for bearing objective risk as a market should eliminate those rents. Knight therefore put forward the idea that the prerequisites for entrepreneurial activity are a combination of highly uncertain returns that do not have an objectively known distribution, as well as the entrepreneur's skill in perceiving opportunity more clearly than others.