The genetics of entrepreneurial performance

Abstract

Behavioral genetics techniques were applied to a sample of self-employed monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins from the USA to examine whether genetic factors influence entrepreneurial performance. The study found that genetics affects the amount of income earned by self-employed people. In addition, the study found that common genes influenced the phenotypic correlations between three of the ‘big five’ personality characteristics – agreeableness, openness to experience and extraversion – and self-employment income, but due to the small sample size, the confidence intervals were high. The implications of a genetic component to self-employment income for research on entrepreneurship are discussed.