Abstract
This paper attempts to identify patterns of convergence in the rates of self-employment (SE) for both foreign-born and natives in a sample of 17 European countries during the period 1999–2018. A distinction is made between self-employed with and without workers. Our analysis is relevant for policy-making: whether or not there is evidence of convergence in SE rates can be an indication of the homogeneity of self-employed workers among the countries analysed, which in turn may reflect the success of the EU-wide policies to boost SE.
Highlights
Entrepreneurship is often pointed to as an important contributor to economic growth, job creation, innovation and production efficiency [1,2,3]
In column (2) we show the results for the differences between the SE rates for employers and the average of the same variable for the countries analysed
For the total SE rate (statistics displayed in column (4)), we find that in none of the cases is the null of unit root rejected, implying that there is no evidence of convergence towards the mean
Summary
Entrepreneurship is often pointed to as an important contributor to economic growth, job creation, innovation and production efficiency [1,2,3] It is associated with more job creation compared to the effects of existing or new firms hiring salaried employees [4] It has a positive effect on labour market integration as well as competition due to an increase in the number of businesses [5]. Difficulties associated with a lack of knowledge of the local language or local customs in host country labour markets could leave migrants with no choice but to create their own business Whenever they have a choice, migrants may prefer wage employment to being self-employed. These authors find that there is no strong evidence that SE is an effective tool of upward economic mobility among low-skilled immigrants
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