Self-employment across 15 European countries: the role of dissatisfaction

André van Stel, Roy Thurik, Sander Wennekers and Niels Noorderhaven ()

No N200223, Scales Research Reports from EIM Business and Policy Research

Abstract: This paper deals with differences in the rate of self-employment (business ownership) in 15 European countries for the period 1978-2000, focusing on the influence of dissatisfaction and using the framework of occupational choice. Using two different measures of dissatisfaction, in addition to the level of economic development, the unemployment rate and income differentials, we find that dissatisfaction at the level of societies is the most significant factor for explaining differences in self-employment levels. Dissatisfaction with life and with the way democracy works are both found to be positively related to self-employment. It is concluded that these are proxies for job dissatisfaction and at the same time represent other negative 'displacements' known to promote self-employment.

Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2003-03-31
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.entrepreneurship-sme.eu/pdf-ez/N200223.pdf (application/pdf)

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:eim:papers:n200223

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Scales Research Reports from EIM Business and Policy Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Webmaster EIM ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).