The Employees of Native and Immigrant Self-Employed

38 Pages Posted: 28 Nov 2007

See all articles by Pernilla Andersson

Pernilla Andersson

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI)

Eskil Wadensjo

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI); IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies (SULCIS)

Date Written: November 2007

Abstract

Using unique register data for Sweden we can match self-employed persons to their employees. We analyze the national composition of the employees and ask if self-employed immigrants mainly employ workers from their home region and if self-employed natives mainly employ native workers. We find that both natives and immigrants are more likely to employ co-nationals than to employ workers with a different national background. We also analyze which factors influence the propensity to hire co-nationals. For immigrants we find that living in a municipality with a high share of co-nationals decreases the probability of employing natives, while the probability that natives employ immigrants increases with the immigrant share in the municipality. We find that the probability for immigrants to hire native workers increases with time spent in Sweden. This result points to that the proximity to people from the same region and possibly also one's network plays an important role for the employment decisions for both self-employed natives and immigrants.

Keywords: self-employment, immigrants, networks

JEL Classification: J15, J61

Suggested Citation

Andersson, Pernilla and Wadensjo, Eskil, The Employees of Native and Immigrant Self-Employed (November 2007). IZA Discussion Paper No. 3147, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1033350 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1033350

Pernilla Andersson

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) ( email )

Kyrkgatan 43B
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

Eskil Wadensjo (Contact Author)

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) ( email )

Universitetsvägen 10F
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Stockholm University Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies (SULCIS) ( email )

SE-106 91 Stockholm
Stockholm
Sweden

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
64
Abstract Views
722
Rank
623,067
PlumX Metrics