Increase In Self-employment Research Articles

Self-employment in craft making – a career change towards personal sustainability.

Contemporary crafts are experiencing a vigorous revival not only as bearers of cultural heritage and meaningful leisure activity, but increasingly as a career choice. According to UNESCO, the creative economy is now one of the world’s most rapidly growing sectors. Recent statistics show that this is apparent in the Icelandic economy. With the rise in precarity of work and challenges in career development, people are seeking meaningful and sustainable careers, as is evidenced by an increase in self-employment and micro-entrepreneurship. The main research question of this study was: How do contemporary craft makers in Iceland make sense of taking up and maintaining financially risky self-employment? Data collection and analysis was therefore focused on motives and shared meaning. The primary empirical data consists of fifteen semi-standardized interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted. The constant comparison method was also applied. Needs for authenticity, autonomy, and self-determination, along with passion for creating, were important motives. Negative career shocks were an unexpectedly common motive. Three main themes were developed to describe how participants reasoned their career choice: a second chance, a natural choice, and an act of agency. The analysis revealed craft knowledge as a valuable resource for participants seeking personal sustainability through self-employment. The study adds to an understanding of the value of crafts and craft knowledge in contemporary society.Keywords: craft knowledge, self-employment, personal sustainability, career sustainability, career shocks

Mobile Broadband, Poverty, and Labor Outcomes in Tanzania

AbstractWhat are the impacts of expanding mobile broadband coverage on poverty, household consumption, and labor-market outcomes in developing countries? Who benefits from improved coverage of mobile internet? To respond to these questions, this paper applies a difference-in-differences estimation using panel household survey data combined with geospatial information on the rollout of mobile broadband coverage in Tanzania. The results reveal that being covered by 3G networks has a large positive effect on total household consumption and poverty reduction, driven by positive impacts on labor-market outcomes. Working-age individuals living in areas covered by mobile internet witnessed an increase in labor-force participation, wage employment, and non-farm self-employment, and a decline in farm employment. These effects vary by age, gender, and skill level. Younger and more skilled men benefit the most through higher labor-force participation and wage employment, while high-skilled women benefit from transitions from self-employed farm work into non-farm employment.

Job-to-job transitions and the job satisfaction puzzle: a diff-in-diff analysis for eleven EU countries

ABSTRACT This paper studies the impact of different types of job-to-job transitions (from salaried employment to self-employment, from self-employment to salaried employment, and within salaried employment) on job satisfaction. Considering the three types of job transition, allows us to separate the pure mobility effect from the type of employment effect. We design an identification strategy based on the diff-in-diff approach. This is possible because our panel data allow us to compare the same individuals before and after job-to-job transitions occur. Our findings indicate that individuals who move from salaried employment to self-employment increase their overall job satisfaction more than workers who carry out other types of job transitions, while the impact of job changes on satisfaction in other job domains is mixed. We also find heterogeneous interactive effects of previous unemployment spells and self-perceived skill mismatch with job transitions depending on the type of transition. While skill mismatch is more important in the transition from salaried employment to self-employment, previous unemployment is more important for job changes within salaried employment.

Impacts of industrial and entrepreneurial jobs on youth: 5-year experimental evidence on factory job offers and cash grants in Ethiopia

We study two interventions for poor and underemployed Ethiopian youth: a $300 grant to spur self-employment, and a job offer to an industrial firm. Each one is designed to help overcome two common barriers to employment: financial market imperfections and matching frictions. We find significant impacts on occupational choice, income, and health in the first year. After five years, however, we see no evidence of long run effects of either intervention. The grant led short-run increases in self-employment, productivity and earnings, but these appear to dissipate over time as recipients exit their businesses. Worrisomely, offers of factory work had no effect on employment or earnings, but led to serious adverse effects on health after one year. Evidence of these effects is gone after five years as well, however. These results point to convergence in most outcomes, and suggest that one-time and one-dimensional interventions may struggle to overcome barriers to wage- or self-employment.

The Racially Unequal Impacts of Disasters and Federal Recovery Assistance on Local Self-Employment Rates

This study examines racial inequalities in changing self-employment rates associated with natural hazard impacts and federal recovery assistance in ethnoracially diverse metropolitan counties between 2000 and 2010. It advances the viewpoint that such inequalities can stem from hoarded opportunities tied to white privilege in addition to commonly highlighted social vulnerabilities tied to racial inequities and exclusion. To test that proposition, we conduct change-score analyses using county-level data from the US Census Bureau, the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Results indicate that (a) overall, self-employment rates increase with local property damages from natural hazards, especially among white and Latino workers; (b) those increases are largely explained by the amount of federal public assistance received for disaster recovery, not property damages themselves; and (c) white workers experience the most positive and consistent increases in self-employment from federal recovery assistance. Implications for understanding racial inequities stemming from current and future disasters and government assistance are discussed.

Self-employment: Influence of Tax Incentives and Income Underreporting

The aim of the article is to answer the question whether the tax benefits that can be obtained by the self-employed in Poland influence the decision to start their own business. In the study, the EUROMOD microsimulation model is used to determine tax benefits from self-employment. The estimated tax benefits are then used in a probit regression to explain the probability of self-employment. The survey is carried out for both original EU-SILC data and adjusted data, assuming that the income reported by the self-employed is underreported. The results of the survey based on the original data indicate that taxpayers make irrational decisions about taking up self-employment. This is because as the benefits of self-employment increase, the probability of self-employment decreases. After ad-justing the data on self-employed income with the underreported income, the results of the analysis lead to the opposite conclusion.

Problems of jurisdiction in disputes involving a self-employed individual as a special subject of economic activity with an undefined legal status

Due to proliferation of the experiment on introduction of special self-employment tax regime across the Russian Federation, the number of self-employed individuals is expected to rise. Moreover, the lockdown brought on by the current pandemic led to a sharp increase in self-employment. This circumstance makes the subject of this research more relevant – the questions of legal status of self-employed individuals in connection to their financial-legal and procedural-legal aspects. The article analyzes the doctrinal approaches towards definition of jurisdiction, the use of which allows overcoming current legislative gap. Research is conducted on the normative act and case law of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation that forms the conceptual approach towards self-employment. For the first time, the activity of a self-employed individual is examined in relation to the concepts of economic, entrepreneurial, and professional activities. The problem of undefined procedural status of a self-employed individual is explored in conjunction with its undefined status in the substantive law. A conclusion is made that such activity should be classified as economic. The scientific novelty consists in posing the question of jurisdiction of disputes involving self-employed individuals. The author concludes on undefined nature of self-employed individual in the substantive law, which leads to legal uncertainty of their procedural status. The uncertainty is expressed in the absence of rules of jurisdiction over disputed involving self-employed individuals. The author makes proposal for changes to procedural legislation.

Mobile Broadband Internet, Poverty and Labor Outcomes in Tanzania

What are the impacts of expanding mobile broadband coverage on poverty, household consumption and labor market outcomes in developing countries? Who benefits from improved coverage of mobile internet? To respond to these questions, this paper applies a difference-in-differences estimation using panel household survey data combined with geospatial information on the rollout of mobile broadband coverage in Tanzania. The results reveal that being covered by 3G networks has a large positive effect on total household consumption and poverty reduction, driven by positive impacts on labor market outcomes. Working age individuals living in areas covered by mobile internet witnessed an increase in labor force participation, wage employment, and non-farm self-employment, and a decline in farm employment. These effects vary by age, gender and skill level. Younger and more skilled men benefit the most through higher labor force participation and wage employment, while high-skilled women benefit from transitions from self-employed farm work into non-farm employment.

자영업의 증가는 경제성장과 실업률에 영향을 미치는가?

본 연구는 우리나라에서 자영업, 실업, 경제성장의 상호관계를 밝히는 것을 목적으로 한다. 외국과는 달리, 대부분의 국내 연구는 주로 실업이 자영업에 미치는 효과를 추정하였고, 따라서 자영업이 실업에 미치는 영향에 대해서는 알려진 것이 거의 없다. 본 연구에서는 3변수, 4변수 VAR모형을 이용하여, 외환위기 전후를 구분하여 우리나라 자영업, 실업, 경제성장 사이의 동학을 추정한다. 분석 결과, 우리나라에서 실업이 증가할 때 자영업이 증가하며, 자영업이 증가하면 다시 실업이 감소하는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 Thurik et al. (2008), Parker et al. (2012) 등의 해외 연구결과와 일관성을 가진다. 또한, 외환위기 이전에는 순수자영업자가 실업을 줄이는데 영향을 미치지 않았지만, 외환위기 이후에는 이들의 증가가 실업을 줄이는 긍정적인 역할을 하는 것으로 나타났다. 따라서 우리나라 자영업 비중이 과도하다는 이유로 인위적으로 자영업을 억제하는 정책은 바람직하지 않은 것으로 판단된다.

Self-employment over the business cycle in the USA: a decomposition.

Entry rates into self-employment increase during recessions and decrease during economic upswings. I show that this is mostly explained by the higher unemployment rate during a recession, together with the fact that at all times, unemployed persons have a relatively high propensity to become self-employed out of necessity. I use econometric decomposition techniques to quantify these effects based on the monthly matched US Current Population Survey before, during, and after the Great Recession. I also document that the entry rate into self-employment with unincorporated businesses strongly increased during the recession, but not into self-employment with incorporated businesses. This highlights the association of unincorporated and incorporated self-employment with necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship, respectively. The results are useful for policymakers and practitioners to understand, forecast and act on the different types of self-employment that can be expected over the business cycle. There are also important implications for theories of the cyclicality of unemployment and entrepreneurship.Plain English Summary Self-employment will increase during recessions when unemployment is high, but it may not boost innovation. During recessions, increased unemployment underlies the higher entry rate into self-employment. Our evidence is from representative survey data from the USA covering the Great Recession. The upside is that self-employment enables workers who lose their jobs to continue to work, which can speed up the subsequent economic recovery. Thus, public policy should enable people to start businesses. However, as during recessions the unemployed mostly start unincorporated businesses, one cannot expect them to boost innovation as much as start-ups during better economic times. These insights also speak to the 2020 recession triggered by COVID-19. If unemployment remains high after the relaxation of the lockdowns, a rise can be expected especially in non-innovative self-employment. Thus, the principal policy implication of this study is that policymakers should ensure that their expectations for new businesses started during deep recessions are realistic for the circumstances.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11187-020-00375-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The innovation-employment nexus: an analysis of the impact of Airbnb on hotel employment

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of Airbnb on hotel employment. Design/methodology/approach A triple-difference regression framework was used to compare changes in hotel employment in three cities in South Africa where Airbnb started operating relative to cities without this home-sharing platform. Data on hotel employment was drawn from the survey on hotel service conducted by Smith Travel Research whereas the data on Airbnb’s listings was drawn from the Airbnb’s homepage for the period between July 2015 and December 2018. The analysis was restricted to 792 hotels. Findings Although prior studies have showed that Airbnb has an adverse impact on hotel performances, the findings show that total hotel employment expanded after the entry of Airbnb, accompanied by a marked relative shift towards self-employment. Airbnb supply negatively affected permanent employment, which was compensated by increase in temporary employment and self-employment. While the paper finds no evidence of adverse employment impacts, the hourly earnings declined for hotel employees were compensated by increase in income among self-employed Airbnb hosts. Although these findings might be contradictory to the general conjecture, such evidence calls for a comprehensive investigation of Airbnb’s overall economic impact. Research limitations/implications First, the study was based on the impact of Airbnb on hotel employment in South Africa. Caution is therefore required when generalising the findings of this study in other geographic areas. Second, some variables that may affect employment have not been included in this study because of the unavailability of data. Practical implications The results show that the sharing economy plays an important role in solving the unemployment problem, particularly in South Africa, where there is a high rate of unemployment. More practical implications are further discussed. Originality/value To the best of author’s knowledge, this paper provides the first systematic evidence of the impact of Airbnb on labour market outcomes in the hotel industry in South Africa.

Segmenting travellers based on day-to-day variability in work-related travel behaviour

Travel needs for commute and business trips are complex and choices are not made based on the characteristics of individual trips, but instead based on the needs over weeks and months. For example, the cost per trip of commuting by bus varies depending upon the frequency of travel, and the cost of a monthly subway pass depends upon the number of zones visited during that period. Intrapersonal variability, namely the variation in an individual's travel behaviour from day to day, therefore shapes our transport choices and should influence service provision. Changes in working patterns such as increases in part time working, self-employment and tele-commuting challenge the traditionally held assumptions that work activities are fixed in time and space, thus making intrapersonal variability increasingly relevant. This research uses a data-driven approach to segment workers based on their work-related travel behaviour, including frequency of travel and both spatial and time of day intrapersonal variability. The analysis uses survey and seven day travel diary data for over 110,000 people collected over a 19 year period in England. Four groups of workers were identified: infrequent, spatially variable, temporally variable and regular travellers. These groups do not align closely with self-reported working arrangements such as self-employment or part time working. The group of regular travellers has decreased in size between 1998 and 2016 but remains the largest group, containing just under 60% of workers in 2016. Both the infrequent and spatially variable groups have grown over the same period. For a small but growing group of workers, a seven day diary is insufficient to understand their work-related transport needs as little or no work travel is recorded. These findings have implications for the design of public transport ticketing, the design of mobility as a service packages and the appraisal of congestion charging schemes.

Feasibility of NGO Initiatives in SME, Rural Benefits and Challenges: A Case Study in Cumilla, Bangladesh

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the NGO initiatives to accelerate the SME sectors. The current study also analyze the rural benefits and challenges based on NGO initiatives in SME sectors. This study conducts a questionnaire and interview survey to investigate the current objective. The quantitative study demonstrates that there is a greater chance to expand the SME sector by using the local resources and capital accumulations. Educations, women empowerment, health and sanitation, employment creations and self-employment increase than a previous decade by increasing NGO initiatives in the study area. The contributions of this study spontaneous gets on to the scope and feasibility of NGO’s initiative to develop the SME sector in Bangladesh.

Television and the Labour Supply: Evidence from the Digital Television Transition in the UK

This paper exploits exogenous variation in the date of transition from analogue to digital television signal in the UK across more than 40,000 geographical units to investigate the causal impact of television on employment probabilities and potential mechanisms. Using a large individual panel survey data set and a difference-in-differences model that compares the outcomes of adults living in regions where the switchover occurred in different years, I find that the digital transition increases employment probabilities. The impact is driven by mothers and is due to an increase in part-time and self-employment. The effect increases with the number of children in a household and when the parent does not cohabit with a partner. A possible explanation for these results is that television keeps children busy, reducing the amount of housework that parents need to do and allowing them to focus on their careers. I test whether the digital transition reduces the time that individuals dedicate to housework and show that this is the case for mothers but not for fathers and non-parents. I find no effect on time allocation other than via housework.

Unintended consequences of maternity leave legislation: The case of Colombia

Abstract We estimate the impact on female labor outcomes of the extension in maternity leave period from 12 to 14 weeks, an amendment to the Colombian labor law in 2011. To identify this impact, we compare labor market outcomes of different groups of individuals with women of child-bearing age. First we compared two groups of women with different fertility rates (low elasticity of substitution), finding that, as result of the extension, women in the high-fertility age group experience an increase in inactivity, informality, and self-employment. When comparing high-fertility age women with men in the same age group (high elasticity of substitution), we find that the extension increases the probability of unemployment, informality and self-employment and decreases wages of women compared with men.

The determinants of self-employment of black entrepreneurs in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal

Orientation: The study seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the determinants of self-employment within the context of black entrepreneurs. Research purpose: Given the unprecedented increase in self-employment, because of reduction in formal job opportunities in South Africa, the primary objective of this study was to probe the determinants of self-employment relative to being a wage earner among black people in Ladysmith. Motivation for the study: The study investigated the determinants of self-employment through the use of the logistic modelling technique as its primary focus. Research design, approach and method: The study employed both probability and non-probability sampling techniques. The convenience and snowball sampling methods were used to locate all targeted entrepreneurs while the systematic random sampling method was used to locate the wage earners. A total of 450 respondents were interviewed through face-to-face administered questionnaires. The data collected was statistically analysed, using SPSS to acquire the descriptive statistics and EViews software to obtain logistic regression results and the related diagnostic tests (Hosmer–Lemeshow test and Wald statistics). Main findings: All the variables, except for household income per capita, were statistically significant, indicating that they were plausible predictors of self-employment. Practical/managerial implications: Financial life skills and entrepreneurship training ought to be embedded in all learning programmes at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. In particular, all young persons through whatever skills development programme – including those offered at in-service and/or work-related training – they are given access to, must be taught to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set. Contribution/value-add: A combination of skills development and guidance-based access to finance to targeted groups involving women, the young adults at schools and tertiary institutions and entrepreneurial adults are likely to reap significant outcomes.

New Opportunities for Youth Entrepreneurship Development and Youth Self-Employment Increase

The article deals with general approaches to understanding the meaning of youth entrepreneurship, provides problems that young people face from the birth of an idea to its implementation, analyzes the main obstacles to the youth entrepreneurship development such as legal uncertainty, lack of financial resources, reduction of state programs, low professional training level, insecurity of entrepreneurs in stability, theft of business ideas, etc.In order to develop youth entrepreneurship and increase the level of self-employment among the youth, the necessary changes regarding each function of youth entrepreneurship, as economic, social and creative, are considered.The authors have supplemented the decision making mechanism on entrepreneurial activity in youth, taking into account the prospects of participation in start-ups and business clubs, and trends in the development of the national economy sector, especially high-tech.According to the results of the study, the article provides concrete measures that promote the youth entrepreneurship development, initiatives aimed directly at working with young people as entrepreneurs, perspective platforms for solving social problems, introducing the philosophy of new entrepreneurial values.So, among the important initiatives are lobbying the interests of young people, introducing effective medium-term forecasting of the labor market, introducing internships for students, developing cluster initiatives for entrepreneurship, promoting the spread of social responsibility of large businesses to support young people in small businesses, promoting the creation of a positive image of a young entrepreneurs, development of the system counseling for young professionals, tax or other benefits for those who support young people, creating a network symbiosis business with incubators, credit institutions and innovative or technology parks.The authors emphasize that entrepreneurship for young people should become the subject of increasing attention from all levels of government, responsible business, the public, international organizations as it promotes the formation of the middle class, the stabilization of society, the employment of young people and other social and economic tasks, as well as directly defines the welfare and level of national income of the country.

Entrepreneurship Over the Business Cycle in the United States: A Decomposition

Entry rates into self-employment increase during recessions and decrease during economic upswings. I show that this is mostly explained by the higher unemployment rate during a recession, together with the fact that at all times, unemployed persons have a relatively high propensity to become entrepreneurs out of necessity because they do not find paid employment. I use econometric decomposition techniques to quantify these effects based on the monthly matched US Current Population Survey before, during and after the Great Recession. I also document that this counter-cyclical pattern of entrepreneurial entry strongly applies to unincorporated entrepreneurship, but only weakly to incorporated entrepreneurship. This highlights the association of unincorporated and incorporated entrepreneurship with necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship, respectively. The results are useful for policy-makers and practitioners to understand, forecast and act on the different types of entrepreneurial activities that are to be expected over the business cycle.

An Efficient Strategy for the Development of Tourism at Regional Level

Tourism promotes the development of small and medium-sized business, an increase in employment and self-employment, and allows smoothing the disproportions of territorial development. The objective of this work is to study the modern state of the tourism industry and to reveal the strategical development trends of tourism in the regions of the Southern Federal District (SFD).The statistical data of Rosstat (Federal Service of State Statistics), Federal Agency for Tourism, the database of the EMISS (Unified Interdepartmental Statistical Information System) and other open sources of information were used as the sources of secondary information.The practical part of the research is based upon the application of the author's method of estimation of the current state of the tourism industry in the regions that presupposes the calculation of the complex index of tourism development in the region.The results of the performed research allowed classifying the regions according to the level of tourism development and determining the strategies of competitiveness improvement of the regional touristic products on its base.

The Effect of the Affordable Care Act on Entrepreneurship among Older Adults

One goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to enable entrepreneurship by increasing access to non-employer-based health insurance. We evaluate the extent to which the ACA was successful at this, providing some of the first estimates of the effect of the main provisions of the ACA on entrepreneurship. We are the first to focus specifically on older adults, whose higher average health costs and health insurance premiums make health insurance more salient to their labor market decisions. We do so using data from the American Community Survey and a difference-in-difference strategy, taking advantage of Medicare-eligibles as a control group less affected by the ACA. We find that the ACA led to a 3–4% increase in self-employment. We find similar increases in the likelihood of being self-employed in an incorporated business and of generating at least $5000 in business income, as well as a 9% increase in the likelihood of being self-employed full time. By lowering the cost of non-employer health insurance policies to older adults, the ACA appears to have eased their transition from employment to self-employment.