Entrepreneurs under Uncertainty: An Economic Experiment

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 in decision tasks. A stratified random sample of 700 CEOs from the Yangzi delta region in China is compared to 200 control group members. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs’ seem to be more willing to accept some forms of strategic uncertainty related to multilateral competition and trust. In contrast, entrepreneurs do not seem to differ from ordinary people when it comes to non-strategic forms of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity