Does self-employment reduce unemployment
January 2005
Research Paper
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This paper investigates the dynamic interrelationship between self-employment and unemployment rates. On the one hand, unemployment rates may stimulate start-up activity of self-employed. On the other hand, higher rates of self-employment may indicate increased entrepreneurial activity reducing unemployment in subsequent periods. These two effects have resulted in considerable ambiguities about the interrelationship between unemployment and entrepreneurial activity. This paper introduces a two equation vector autoregression model capable of reconciling these ambiguities and tests it for data of 23 OECD countries over the period 1974-2002. The empirical results confirm the two distinct relationships between unemployment and self-employment, i.e. ‘refugee’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ effects. We also find that the ‘entrepreneurial’ effects are considerably stronger than the ‘refugee’ effects.
- L11 : Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
- M13 : New Firms; Startups
- unemployment
- self-employment
- model
- effect
- activity
- business
- country
- equation
- change
- impact
- growth
- self-employment rates
- self-employment rate
- economic
- thurik
- variable
- unemployment rates
- study
- relationship
- david
