Entrepreneurs Under Uncertainty: An Economic Experiment in China

This study reports findings from the first large-scale experiment investigating whether entrepreneurs differ from other people in their willingness to expose themselves to various forms of uncertainty. A stratified random sample of 700 chief executive officers from the Yangzi delta region in China is compared to 200 control group members. Our findings suggest that in economic decisions, entrepreneurs are more willing to accept strategic uncertainty related to multilateral competition and trust. However, entrepreneurs do not differ from ordinary people when it comes to nonstrategic forms of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity.

This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.