Fringe benefits and small businesses: evidence from the federal reserve board small business survey

David Bernstein

Applied Economics, 2002, vol. 34, issue 16, 2063-2067

Abstract: Data from the 1993 National Survey of Small Businesses (NSSBF) is used to analyse the factors affecting the provision of pensions and health insurance by small businesses. The race of the business owner is found to impact the provision of taxadvantaged fringe benefits, even after accounting for a wide range of other economic and demographic variables. It is not possible to determine why owner race impacts the provision of fringe benefits by small businesses but the significance of the race variable might reflect a lower level of marketing effort by financial service firms in minority-dominated communities. The owner education variable, which is also significant in both the pension and health insurance models, could also be a proxy for the availability of general information about the importance of fringe benefits. With the exception of the sole proprietorship variable, the demographic and economic variables appear to have similar effects on the provision of both pensions and health insurance by small businesses. Some sole proprietors appear to prefer pension benefits to health insurance benefits possibly because pensions allow the business owner to shield some assets in the case of bankruptcy.

Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840210126205 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:34:y:2002:i:16:p:2063-2067

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840210126205

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().