Are the Self-Employed Really Jacks-of-All-Trades?Testing the Assumptions and Implications of Lazear’sTheory of Entrepreneurship with German Data

Using a large representative German data set and various concepts of self-employment, thispaper tests the “jack-of-all-trades” view of entrepreneurship by Lazear (AER 2004).Consistent with its theoretical assumptions we find that self-employed individuals performmore tasks and that their work requires more skills than that of paid employees. In contrast toLazear’s assumptions, however, self-employed individuals do not just need more basic butalso more expert skills than employees. Our results also provide only very limited support forthe idea that human capital investment patterns differ between those who become selfemployedand those ending up in paid employment....