TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Dawson, Christopher
AU  - Meza, David Emmanuel de
AU  - Henley, Andrew
AU  - Arabsheibani, Reza
        TI  - The Power of (Non) Positive Thinking: Self-Employed Pessimists Earn More than Optimists
        PY  - 2015/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 9242
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp9242
        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.
        KW  - self-employment
KW  - expectations
KW  - financial optimism
        ER  -