To what extent do policies contribute to self-employment?

Mark Baker, Balázs Égert, Gabor Fulop and Annabelle Mourougane
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Mark Baker: OECD
Gabor Fulop: OECD

No 1512, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Using cross-country time series panel regressions for the last two decades, this paper seeks to identify the main policy and institutional factors that explain the share of self-employment across European countries. It looks at the aggregate share of self-employed as well as its breakdown by age, skill and gender. The generosity of unemployment benefits, and to a lesser extent, spending on active labour market policies appear to be robust determinants of the long-term share of self-employed in European countries. No significant relation is found between the stringency of employment protection and aggregate self-employment. However, there are significant, and oppositely signed, impacts on high- and low-skilled self-employed separately. Both the tax wedge and the minimum wage appear to be positively related to the share of self-employed in the long term, but the relation holds for some categories of workers only.

Keywords: labour market; OECD; self-employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 J40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1512-en

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