Paving the Way for Self-Employment: Does Society Matter?

This paper empirically investigates the extent to which institutional and individual factors predict the level of intention relating to self-employment. Arriving at a better understanding of intentions will assist to provide answers as to why ratios of self-employment are as they are and how public and economic policy may respond to an often perceived requirement to increase the level of self-employment. Using the dataset of 2017 Amway Global Entrepreneurship Research (AGER) for Austria, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and Brazil this study finds that all variables predicting the intention to enter self-employment are significant at varying degree. The research explores the interplay between age, risk, gender, and education, on the one hand, and unemployment (OECD Labour Force Statistics) and political constitution as measured by the EFW index, on the other hand. Distinguishing between “no intention”, an “indifferent intention,” and a “strong intention” towards self-employment, the findings show that all variables can predict a willingness for self-employment in different, but significant, ways to comparable measures (an indifferent intention relative to no intention, and a strong intention to no intention). The paper concludes with an outlook to some more general perspectives of institutional economics and needs for further research.