Abstract
This study examines whether social enterprise development improves labor market outcomes of the entire economy. Using the data of social enterprise and labor force survey in Vietnam, we conduct a regression analysis to address this question. We focus on the rapid growth period of social enterprises in Vietnam during the early 2010s. Our results suggest that, as the number of social enterprises increases, average labor earnings increase, the probabilities of being unemployed and being self-employed decrease, and average working hours increase. Since our study evaluates the effect of social enterprise development on the outcomes for the overall labor market rather than the social enterprise sector alone, it provides justification for promoting such a policy from policymakers’ point of view.
Highlights
Social enterprises—commonly understood as businesses that prioritize the achievement of social and environmental benefits over profit-making for their owners—have received increasing global attention from both social and economic standpoints
While questions about the effect of social enterprise development on macroeconomic consequences, especially labor market outcomes, are of primary importance and can be answered only through empirical analysis in various policy contexts, previous quantitative studies that have tested empirical implications related to social enterprise development are at an early stage in this research field
We believe that this paper is the first empirical study to investigate the effect of social enterprise development on individual worker outcomes in a nationwide labor market, including labor earnings, being unemployed, labor force participation, working hours, and being self-employed
Summary
Social enterprises—commonly understood as businesses that prioritize the achievement of social and environmental benefits over profit-making for their owners—have received increasing global attention from both social and economic standpoints. Policies to promote social enterprises (hereafter referred to as SEs) have become popular in the OECD countries, and in many developing countries such as members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations [1]. This growing attention is prompted by an urgent need to reconcile economic development with social and environmental sustainability, in which the modern economy has proved incapable of satisfying individuals with a range of preferences in an uncertain and resource-constrained environment [2].
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