Technological progress and the dynamics of self-employment: Worker-level evidence for Europe

Ronald Bachmann, Myrielle Gonschor, Santo Milasi and Alessio Mitra

No 1023, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: We examine how technology is associated with self-employment dynamics using worker-level data from 31 European countries. We find that while employees exposed to labour-augmenting technologies are more likely to move from paid-employment to solo self-employment and viceversa, employees exposed to labour-saving technologies are less likely to become self-employed. We identify important differences with respect to workers' socio-demographic characteristics. The results suggest that while labour-augmenting technologies promote workers' mobility and reduce unemployment risks for high-skilled workers, they have the opposite effect for low-skilled workers. Furthermore, labour-saving technologies worsen labour market outcomes particularlyfor low-skilled and routine workers.

Keywords: Solo self-employment; occupations; tasks; technology; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J62 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-eur, nep-inv, nep-lma and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/282007/1/1880205084.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:zbw:rwirep:282007

DOI: 10.4419/86788924

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().