TY - UNPB
T1 - The Power of (Non) Positive Thinking
T2 - Self-Employed Pessimists Earn More than Optimists
AU - Henley, Andrew
AU - Dawson, Christopher George
AU - de Meza, David
AU - Arabsheibani, G. Reza
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Developing further the accumulating evidence that self-employment attracts optimists, this paper investigates the relationship between earnings and prior optimism. It finds that self-employed optimists earn less than self-employed realists. Amongst employees, optimists earn more. These results are consistent with biased expectations leading to entry errors. As a test of validity, we find that amongst the married, future divorcees have higher financial expectations but their realisations are no worse, suggesting our optimism measure captures an intrinsic psychological trait associated with rash decisions
AB - Developing further the accumulating evidence that self-employment attracts optimists, this paper investigates the relationship between earnings and prior optimism. It finds that self-employed optimists earn less than self-employed realists. Amongst employees, optimists earn more. These results are consistent with biased expectations leading to entry errors. As a test of validity, we find that amongst the married, future divorcees have higher financial expectations but their realisations are no worse, suggesting our optimism measure captures an intrinsic psychological trait associated with rash decisions
UR - http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/publications/papers/viewAbstract?dp_id=9242
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/39946
M3 - Discussion paper
T3 - IZA Institute for Labor discussion paper
BT - The Power of (Non) Positive Thinking
ER -