Self-Employment in Spain During the Nineties: An Approach to its Determinants and Success

50 Pages Posted: 23 Feb 2010 Last revised: 23 Mar 2010

See all articles by Emilio Congregado

Emilio Congregado

University of Huelva

José María Millán

University of Huelva

Concepción Román

University of Huelva

Date Written: February 22, 2010

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of self-employment entry and success in Spain during the Nine-ties by means of two complementary data sets. The data used come from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) and from the Spanish Continuous Expenditure Survey (ECPF). Toward this end, different transitions are explicitly considered by means of different starting status –unemployed or paid-employed- and final destinations –employers and own-account workers-. In addition, the decision of entering employership from own-account work is also analyzed, as a sign of success. In conducting this analysis, discrete choice models, including binary and multinomial logit models are applied. We obtain evidence of how all informal processes of acquisition of this capital (i.e. previous experience in the labour market or intergenerational transfers) present stronger effects than those attached to formal education. In addition, and consistent with the idea that self-employment is se en as an alternative to unemployment, transitions from unemployment are much more likely than transitions from paid-employment. Finally, we obtain little evidence in favour of any of the hypotheses of the push-pull controversy, which might be explained by the existence of both effects working at the same time (as a result, neither dominates the other).

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, self-employment, unemployment, occupational choice, Spain

JEL Classification: J24, J64, J68, M13, L26

Suggested Citation

Congregado, Emilio and Millan, Jose Maria and Román, Concepción, Self-Employment in Spain During the Nineties: An Approach to its Determinants and Success (February 22, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1557306 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1557306

Emilio Congregado (Contact Author)

University of Huelva ( email )

Departament of Economics
Plaza de la Merced, 11
Huelva, Huelva 21002
Spain

HOME PAGE: http://www.uhu.es/emilio.congregado

Jose Maria Millan

University of Huelva ( email )

Plaza de la Merced 11
Huelva, Huelva 21071
Spain
+34959217886 (Phone)

Concepción Román

University of Huelva ( email )

Plaza de la Merced 11
Huelva, Huelva 21071
Spain
+34959217886 (Phone)

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