1. Li, M. The Intergenerational Persistence of Self-Employment across China's Planned Economy Era / Li, M., Goetz S. J. // Journal of labor economics. – 2019. – Vol. 37. – iss. 4. – P. 1301-1330.
Children whose parents were self-employed before China's socialist transformation were more likely to become self-employed after the economic reform, even though they had no direct exposure to their parents' businesses. The effect is statistically significant only for sons. The lack of direct exposure to family businesses impedes the transfer of business human capital and motivates us to explore personality traits as the underlying mechanisms. We find that children with self-employed parents are also more likely to invest in risky assets and to consume cigarettes. This suggests that children of self-employed parents inherit personality traits that induce risky behaviors.
2. Cai, Z. Motherhood, migration, and self-employment of college graduates / Cai Z., Stephens H. M., Winters J. // Small business economics. – 2019. – Vol. 53. – iss. 3. – P. 611-629.
Women face unique challenges in starting and running their own businesses and may have differing motives to men for pursuing self-employment. Previous research suggests that married women with families value the flexibility that self-employment can offer, allowing them to balance their family responsibilities with their career aspirations. This may be especially true for college graduates, who tend to have more successful businesses. Access to childcare may also affect their labor force decisions. Using American Community Survey microdata, we examine how birth-place residence, a proxy for access to extended family and childcare, relates to self-employment and hours worked for college graduate married mothers. Our results suggest that flexibility is a major factor pulling out-migrant college-educated mothers into self-employment. Additionally, it appears that, in response to fewer childcare options, self-employed mothers away from their birth-place work fewer hours, while self-employed mothers residing in their birth-place are able to work more hours per week.
3. Luo, B. Regional differences in self-employment in China / Luo B. Chong T. Tai-Leung // Small business economics. – 2019. – Vol. 53. – iss. 3. – P. 813-837.
This paper investigates the impact of personal characteristics and institutional environment on the decision to be self-employed in China. It is shown that a difference in the likelihood of being self-employed exists between urban and rural areas. Our results show that institutional differences between rural and urban areas influence self-employment decisions. Factors that exert a consistent impact regardless of the local institutional environment are marriage, education, money spent on weddings and gifts, economic openness, and accessibility of information. The impact of other factors differs across rural and urban areas. These factors include family ownership of real estate, experience, gender, population density, the management capacity of local government, and the development of private economy in the local community.
4. Brynin, M. The Value of Self-Employment to Ethnic Minorities / Brynin M.Karim M. S., Zwysen W. // Work employment and society. – 2019. – Vol. 33, iss. 5. - P. 846-864.
5. Contreras, S. A. Self-Employment in Times of Crisis: The Case of the Spanish Financial Crisis / Contreras S. A. // ECONOMIES. – 2019. – Vol. 7. – iss. 3. - article number 88.
6. Vlase, I. Nesting self-employment in education, work and family trajectories of Romanian migrant returnees / Vlase I., Croitoru A. // Current sociology. – 2019. – Vol. 67. – iss. 5. – P. 778-797.
Challenging a biased view towards self-employed returnees as neoliberal selves, as the normalized approach of the migration-development nexus tends to depict them, this article builds an alternative conceptual framework to unpack the variegated experiences of migrant returnees' self-employment trajectories in post-socialist Romania. The authors argue that the overemphasis on the benefits of return migration for origin countries through the skewed focus on the migrants' accrual of human and financial capital and their ostensible entrepreneurial orientation has resulted in disregarding more influential biographical and cultural aspects. Life story interviews with middle-aged participants reveal the complex subjectivities that are co-produced by the habitus formed during communism - as children born and raised within working-class families - neoliberalism's rise during the post-socialist transition, and migration, which altered the pursuit of their life goals. The article documents three distinct self-employment pathways among the interviewed return migrants, suggesting that the subjectivities of the self-employed are not uniformly confined to neoliberal self-understandings.
7. Lim, K. Do American mothers use self-employment as a flexible work alternative? / Lim K. // Review of economics of the household. – 2019. – Vol.17. – iss. 3. –P. 805-842.
This paper provides evidence that self-employment is a quantitatively important work alternative that American mothers use to gain workplace flexibility. First, I use panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to show that self-employment rates are higher when women have young children at home in a pattern that has remained largely unchanged over the previous three decades. I estimate that women whose youngest child is two years old have 14% higher predicted self-employment rates due to the birth of that child. Second, I show that self-employed women appear to have more flexibility in their work location, hours, and schedule than wage and salary employed women using data from the American Time Use Survey. I find that mothers with young children use self-employment to spend an additional two hours per day with their children. My results suggest that mothers use self-employment to gain more control over their work environment allowing them to better manage their household responsibilities while working. These findings contribute to the ongoing discussion on the importance of family friendly work policies and the rise of alternative work arrangements.
8. Wang, C. Tightened Immigration Policies and the Self-Employment Dynamics of Mexican Immigrants / Wang C. // Journal of policy analysis and management. – 2019. – Vol. 38. – iss. 4. - P 944.
As the U.S. government has intensified its crackdown on illegal immigration in recent years, an important question to ask is how undocumented immigrants react to the stricter enforcement of immigration laws. This paper seeks to answer whether they increasingly choose self‐employment in an effort to avoid apprehension and subsequent deportation. To guard against endogeneity bias that might stem from increased enforcement in reaction to illegal immigration, the empirical analysis makes use of the September 11 terror attacks (9/11), which inadvertently triggered stricter immigration enforcement nationwide, as a natural experiment. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach and data from the Current Population Survey between 1996 and 2006, this paper examines the changes in the self‐employment choices of male and non‐citizen Mexican immigrants (a proxy for undocumented immigrants) compared to less‐educated Whites (the control group). The findings indicate that male and non‐citizen Mexican immigrants are substantially more likely (40 percent) to enter into self‐employment than less‐educated Whites after 9/11. The analysis further suggests that this finding is not driven by the 2001 recession that coincided with the terror attacks. The increased entries are mainly observed in the group that is most likely to be in the United States illegally and in those who face strong economic incentives. In addition, increased entries are not driven by increased unemployment among Mexican immigrants after the 9/11 event, but, rather, they reflect a change in the behavior of the unemployed Mexican immigrants, perhaps due to changes in perceived risks of detection and deportation.
9. Kapelinsky, T. Complex Worker: Self-Concept and Boundary-Work Among the Solo Self-Employed / Kapelinsky T., Shoshana A. // Sociological spectrum. – 2019. – Vol. 39. – iss. 3. – P. 163-180.
This article proposes to examine the self-concept of members of an occupational category referred to as the "solo self-employed"-women and men who work alone and do not employ other workers. Our findings reveal that although the solo self-employed themselves do not make clear phenomenological use of the solo-self-employed category, they do speak similarly about their occupational independence, albeit without group awareness. The self-concept of the solo self-employed is mainly based on boundary work in relation to two well-known cultural-occupational categories: "employed workers" and "businesspeople." Solo-employed workers prefer to distance themselves from these two categories and define themselves through negative comparisons between themselves and the two preceding categories. The Discussion section proposes perceiving solo self-employment as a social category that constructs an alternative self in relation to the selves associated with popular cultural-occupational scenarios.
10. Korhonen, M. Self-employment and psychometric measure of risk aversion: a replication and extension / Korhonen M., Svento R., Vaaramo M. // Applied economics letters. – 2019.
We examine whether the psychometric feature, called fear of uncertainty, predicts self-employment choice by individuals. Using the most recent Northern Finland birth cohort 1966 (NFBC1966) data from 2012, we find no clear evidence of such an effect. We also explore whether this effect might have changed due to increase of females in labour market, endogenous adaptation in risk preferences or because of the self-employment experience itself affects risk preferences. These effects are not significant, either.
11. Fritsch, M. Historical shocks and persistence of economic activity: evidence on self-employment from a unique natural experiment / Fritsch M., Sorgner A., Wyrwich M. [et al.] // Regional studies. – 2019. – Vol. 53. – iss. 6. – P. 790-802.
This paper investigates the persistence of self-employment in the districts of Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave, between 1925 and 2010. The area experienced a number of disruptive historical shocks during this period. This setting rules out the fact that the persistence of self-employment can be explained by the persistence of institutions and culture. Nevertheless, a high level of persistence of industry-specific self-employment rates is found. It is argued that a historical tradition of entrepreneurship created an awareness about the entrepreneurial potential of regions among the new population that was yielded after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This effect seems to be higher in regions where a specific industry was advanced in terms of technology use.
12. Bosch, N. Income and occupational choice responses of the self-employed to tax rate changes: Heterogeneity across reforms and income / Bosch N., de Boer H. // Labour economics. – 2019. – Vol. 58. – P 1-20.
This study examines the responsiveness of self-employment income and choice of self-employment rather than wage employment to tax changes in the Netherlands. We exploit several tax reforms in 1999-2012 that affected income from self-employment and wage income differently. We estimate an Elasticity of Taxable Income (ETI) of 0.3 for the self-employed. We find that the self-employed respond much stronger to tax incentives than wage earners, and did so more to the major tax reform in 2001 than to the two smaller reforms in 2005 and 2007. Further, contrary to earlier studies, we find the ETI for the self-employed to be decreasing in income. However, we find no evidence that net-of-tax earnings differentials affect occupational choice responses.
13. Mijoc, J. Achievement motivation in the clarification of self-employment intentions // Mijoc J. // Ekonomska misao i praksa-economic thought and practice. – 2019. – Vol. 28. – iss. 1. – P. 223-244.
Theoreticians, psychologists and researchers have been focusing their attention onto exploration of meaning, influence and dimensions of motivation. Since the 1950s, when the concepts of motivation were intensively debated, many studies have been conducted analysing motivational factors, whose diversification resulted in constructing numerous theories based on different approaches to motivation in literature. Generally speaking, the motivation research explores the impact of attitudes on behaviour, incentives associated with certain behaviour and behaviour management strategies. This paper focuses on research of achievement motivation and it's predictive power in self-employment intentions of young adults. Self-employment is one of the possible solutions to realizing employment status, however in the former socialist countries this phenomenon is still not the dominant category, especially not for young unemployed adults. In order to promote self-employment it is necessary to determine statistically significant difference in assessing readiness for job creation through one's own start up and assessing employment readiness in existing private or state-owned enterprises. The research was conducted in the Republic of Croatia among graduate students at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek (N=428). The respondents are near the end of their higher education and expected to pursue self-employment opportunities over the next few months. Results of regression analysis indicate that achievement motivation can be a predictor of self-employment intentions of graduate students (beta=0.254, p<0.001).
14. Cumurovic, A. Financial Literacy and Self-Employment // Cumurovic A., Hyll W. // Journal of consumer affairs. – 2019. – Vol. 53. – iss. 2. – P. 455-487.
In this paper, we study the relationship between financial literacy and self-employment. We use established financial literacy questions to measure literacy levels. The analysis shows a highly significant and positive correlation between the index and self-employment. We address the direction of causality by applying instrumental variable techniques based on information about maternal education. We also exploit information on financial support and family background to account for concerns about the exclusion restriction. The results provide support for a positive effect of financial literacy on the probability of being self-employed. As financial literacy is acquirable, the findings suggest that entrepreneurial activities might be increased by enhancing financial literacy.
15. Glavin, P. Precarious versus Entrepreneurial Origins of the Recently Self-Employed: Work and Family Determinants of Canadians' Self-Employment Transitions // Glavin P., Filipovic T., van der Maas M. // Sociological forum. – Vol. 34. – iss. 2. – P. 386-408.
We investigate the wage work and family determinants of self-employment entry using a panel study of Canadian workers (Canadian Work Stress and Health Study). Rather than treating the self-employed as a homogenous group-a characterization that conflates entrepreneurial ventures with lower quality and more precarious self-employment-we disaggregate self-employment entrants by occupational class. Descriptive analyses show that the nonprofessional self-employed-the most common form of self-employment observed in the study-are considerably more likely to report low income (<$25,000) and insufficient work hours compared to wage workers and the professional self-employed. Event history analyses based on a multinomial logistic model also reveal that poor wage-work quality-including low income, job insecurity, and unchallenging work-increases the likelihood of a transition from wage work into nonprofessional self-employment. In contrast, job autonomy and human capital predict an increased likelihood of a transition into professional self-employment. Our results suggest that both classic entrepreneurial and forced motivations explain self-employment entry when the self-employed's occupational class is distinguished; however, findings are mixed regarding the salience of work-family factors in predicting self-employment entry. We discuss the value of using a "good jobs, bad jobs" perspective to disaggregate the pathways from wage work into lower versus higher quality self-employment.
16. Women's empowerment through self-employment in tourism // Vujko A., Tretiakova T. N., Petrovic M. D. [et al.] // Annals of tourism research. -2019. – vol. 76. – p. 328-330.
17. Do Self-employment Rates Converge? Evidence from European OECD Countries // Saridakis G., Mendoza G., Miguel A., Torres R. I. M. [et al.] // Jcms-journal of common market studies. – 2019. – Vol. 57. – iss. 3. – P. 551-562.
This article uses panel data methods for stationary and non-stationary data to examine whether self-employment rates converge for 21 OECD European countries from 1990 to 2011 (the period covered by the COMPENDIA database). This article shows that there is a process of conditional convergence of self-employment rates particularly within Southern, Northern and Western Europe. These regional groups were characterized by a decreasing trend in their average self-employment rates. However in Central Europe we find more mixed results across the tests used and observe a rising trend in the average self-employment rates. Finally, we find some weak evidence of convergence among all European countries.
18. Semenza, R. Labour market segmentation: The economic condition of self-employed professionals in Italy and Argentina / Semenza R., Sarti S. // Papers-revista de sociologia. – 2019. – Vol. 104. – iss. 2. – P. 203-223.
19. Fachinger, U. Senior Entrepreneurship. Self-employment by Older People - an Uncharted Territory / Fachinger U. // Zagreb international review of economics & business. –Vol. 22. - P. 95-106.
20. Porras-Arena S. Self-employment and the Okun's law // S. Porras-Arena, Martin-Roman A. L. // Economic modelling. -2019. –Vol. 77. – P. 253-265.
This research establishes a significant relationship between the share of self-employment in total employment and the Okun's coefficient, which had been insufficiently addressed in the literature. We provide evidence on the determinants driving the differences in the unemployment-output relationship in Spanish regions and conclude that the differences in the share of self-employment in total employment prove relevant when accounting for differences in Okun's law, and its effect is greater than that of labour productivity per worker, which had been considered the main factor for regional discrepancies. The economic policy implications of this outcome are valuable for two reasons: European authorities are promoting self-employment and the emergence of the 'gig economy'. This finding also opens a notable line of research: assessing whether this empirical regularity is observable in other economies.
21. Freelance as a Creative Mode of Self-employment in a New Economy (a Literature Review) // Baitenizov D. T., Dubina I. N., Campbell D. F. J. [et al.] // Journal of the knowledge economy. – 2019. – Vol. 10. – iss. 1. – P. 1-17.
Self-employment, as an economic and labour phenomenon, contributes noticeably to the economy of many countries. This paper presents an analytical review of the literature of 1970-2017, on the subject of self-employment and freelance as a new form of self-employment, and reveals tendencies and perspectives for the development of self-employment in context of the processes of globalisation and the forming and formation of a new (creative, knowledge and innovation) economy or a creative creativity economy.
22. Cabral, A. Self-Employment Income Gap in Great Britain: How Much and Who? / Cabral A. Cinta G., Kotsogiannis C., Myles G. // Cesifo economic studies. -2019. –Vol. 65. –iss. 1. – P. 84-107.
23. Torres, M. The impact of the economic crisis (2008-2013) on the profile of new self-employed workers according to their nationality: an approximation from the continuous sample of working lives / Torres M., Alfonso J. ; Gonzalez Rodrigo E., Bordonado Bermejo M. J. // Revesco-revista de estudios cooperativos. -2019. –Vol. 131. – P. 9-31.
24. Jeon, S. Balancing family and work: transition to self-employment among new mothers / Jeon S, Ostrovsky Y. // Oxford economic papers-new series. -2019. –Vol. 71. – iss.1. – P. 47-72.
We examine the role of self-employment in helping women improve familywork balance. We focus specifically on women who become new mothers and various aspects of their transitions from wage employment to self-employment. Becoming a new mother increases the probability of making such transitions, and our sensitivity analysis addressing selection on the unobservables suggests that this relationship is likely causal. Consistent with the view that such transitions are motivated by the demand for greater working hours flexibilityuthe weekly working hours of the new mothers making a transition to self-employment become more uniformly distributed than when they were wage earners.
25. Fritsch, M. Traditions of Self-Employment and the Entrepreneurial Personality Profile of the Population / Fritsch M., Wyrwich M. // Regional trajectories of entrepreneurship, knowledge, and growth: the role of history and culture. - 2019. – Vol. 40. – P. 119-131. – (International Studies in Entrepreneurship).
We investigate the relationship between a regional tradition of entrepreneurship and the personality profile of the regional population. Based on the Big Five approach of assessing someone’s personality structure we construct an entrepreneurial personality profile. We find a significant relationship between the historical level of self-employment in a region and the presence of people with an entrepreneurial personality profile today. This supports the notion of persistent regional entrepreneurship as an indicator of regional entrepreneurship culture. A pronounced regional culture of entrepreneurship is correlated not only with higher levels of new business formation today, but also with higher levels of innovation activity in terms of patents per population in working age.
26. Tsvetkova, A. Self-employment effects on regional growth: a bigger bang for a buck? / Tsvetkova A., Partridge M., Betz M. // Small business economics. – 2019. =--Vol. – 52. – iss. 1. – P. 27-45.
This paper estimates the net employment spillovers from changes in self-employment (SE) and compares them to spillovers from changes in wage and salary (WS) employment using US county-level data. Our findings offer a policy-relevant perspective on the relative importance of SE and WS employment and help bridge two entrepreneurship research traditions. Our estimated effects of self-employment, at the margin, are substantially larger than identical effects of paid employment. This supports the literature that points to a special role played by self-employed businesses in economic growth. At the same time, the little attention given to SE as a potential engine of growth among policymakers and scholars can be explained, at least in part, by the relatively small total economic impact of self-employment stemming from its small share of the economy. In an austere fiscal environment, however, spending a dollar to stimulate SE is likely to have greater returns as opposed to stimulating WS employment, assuming the costs of adding one SE and one WS job are comparable.
27. Shin, E. J. Self-employment and travel behavior: A case study of workers in central Puget Sound / Shin E. J. // Transport policy. – 2019. – Vol. 73. – P. 101-112.
Self-employment has been an important livelihood means for many U.S. workers. Self-employed workers are likely to have distinctive travel behavior because, compared to employees, they have greater autonomy over work scheduling and are less affected by imperfect information about the labor market, which increases commutes. However, very few empirical studies have addressed this subject. Using data from the 2014 Puget Sound Regional Travel Survey, I examine the multiple dimensions of work and non-work travel behavior of the self-employed in comparison to employees. The results show that the effects of self-employment on travel behavior vary by whether a worker commutes. Specifically, the self-employed who travel to work have a shorter commuting distance and time than their employee counterparts, although this seems to be offset by increased travel distance and time for other work-related and non-work purposes. In addition, self-employed commuters are more likely to drive alone for both commute and non-commute purposes, partly because they tend to travel more during off-peak hours than their employee counterparts. However, for those who work at home, being self-employed does not have significant effects on most travel behavior outcomes. This paper also elucidates the environmental sustainability of workers' travel behavior by self-employment status, which has been missing in previous literature.
28. Borella, M. Self-employment in Italy: the role of Social Security Wealth / Borella M., Belloni M. // Journal of pension economics & finance. – 2019. – Vol. 18. – iss. 1. – P. 31-65.
Using a rich micro dataset drawn from administrative archives, we explore whether Social Security Wealth (SSW) is an important factor affecting the decision to become self-employed. We focus on the two main categories of self-employed professions covered by the Italian public pension system: craftsmen and shopkeepers. We use the large exogenous variation in individual expected SSW that occurred as a result of the policy reform process undertaken in Italy during the 1990s to identify the effect of this variable and we study how the probability of being self-employed or employed depends, amongst other things, on the difference in the expected SSW that accrues under the two alternative employment scenarios. Our key finding is that a higher difference in expected SSW from self-employment compared with employment has a positive effect on the probability of being self-employed and on the probability of switching to self-employment, whereas it has a negative effect on the probability of switching from self-employment to employment.
29. Banerjee, P. Subversive Self-Employment: Intersectionality and Self-Employment Among Dependent Visas Holders in the United States / Banerjee, P. // American Behavioral Scientist. – 2019. – Vol. 63(2). – P. 186-207.
Drawing on intersectionality theory, I examine how U.S. visa policies shape the informal self-employment experiences of Indian women and men who migrated to the United States on “dependent visas” to accompany their highly skilled spouses on temporary work visas. Dependent visa policy prohibits employment for the visa holders for a period that can last from 6 to 20 years. Despite this, only a handful of those on dependent visas pursued informal self-employment in my sample, with fewer men than women. This study is based on interviews with 45 participants, with a special focus on 18 dependent spouses (men and women), who had engaged in active self-employment, and tries to understand their experiences with self-employment, particularly their choice of businesses and the role of self-employment in their lives as dependents. I conclude that the complexities of the experiences of self-employment for my research participants are embedded in the intersections of their gender, class, race, and immigration status. Additionally, self-employment itself inadvertently becomes an act of subversion against their state-imposed dependence.
30. Burchell, B.J. The Experience of Self-Employment Among Young People: An Exploratory Analysis of 28 Low- to Middle-Income Countries / Burchell, B.J., Coutts, A.P. // American Behavioral Scientist. – 2019. – Vol. 63(2). – P. 147-165.
Youth unemployment has become the global “wicked” policy issue for governments and multilateral agencies with many regions experiencing endemically high levels. In response, governments and international organizations have introduced more active labor market interventions to address youth unemployment. Self-employment and entrepreneurship programs are seen as the key mechanisms to reduce unemployment, welfare dependency, and poverty. We use the International Labour Organization’s 2012 School-to-Work Transition Survey from 28 developing countries to provide new evidence of young people’s experience of job quality and associated working conditions in self-employment. We find that self-employment is not necessarily a favorable employment status in terms of the economic and social benefits it provides for young people. In countries often characterized by limited formal employment opportunities, a large informal sector and depressed local labor markets, self-employment can be seen as the only realistic way many young people can generate an income. Entry into self-employment can be more accurately described as a pragmatic coping mechanism.