Among the OECD countries, Spain faces one of the highest rates of self-employment and Denmark one of the lowest, being the difference specially relevant among women. These two countries present important differences in their institutional environment and labour market conditions: the level of labour market flexibility and the importance of parttime employment, the generosity of the unemployment benefit systems, and the role of the child care policies, among others. In this paper we compare the Danish and Spanish labour markets and analyze to what extent the different evolution of female and male self-employment rates are influenced by country-specific employment conditions. This study is carried out for men and women separately using a strictly comparable panel data set for the two countries. The results indicate that in Spain self-employment seems to offer individuals who normally are considered as marginalized in the labour market a beneficial alternative to wage employment, while this pattern is not so clear in Denmark. Our analysis suggests that an important factor in explaining the difference in Danish and Spanish self-employment rates is the different employment environment that both countries face.
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Paper provided by University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics in its series CAM Working Papers with number
2003-06.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E64 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Incomes Policy; Price Policy J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy J58 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Public Policy J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Blanchflower, David G & Oswald, Andrew J, 1998.
"What Makes an Entrepreneur?,"
Journal of Labor Economics,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 26-60, January.
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