Empirical evidence supports the conventional wisdom that entrepreneurs are more optimistic and overconfident than others. However, the same holds true for top managers. In this lab-in-the-field experiment we directly compare the scores of entrepreneurs, managers and employees on a comprehensive...

We present a theory of entrepreneurial behavior that explores the relationship between overconfidence and successful firm outcomes, such as acquisition or IPO. In our model, increasing overconfidence produces two conflicting effects on the probability of a successful outcome: it not only induces...

Prior research has identified individual characteristics that distinguish business owners from non-business owners. We tested our contention that not every successful business owner can be characterized by such typical ldquo;entrepreneurialrdquo; characteristics. Multiple Analysis of Variance...