Balázs Páger (p), László Szerb

The paper addresses the research question whether young firm owners’ entrepreneurial abilities and aspirations differ significantly in Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions compared to the Northern and Western European (NWE) regions.

Recent research reinforces the view that the distribution of entrepreneurial activity and entrepreneurship are spatially unbalanced (Feldman 2001, Audretsch and Fritsch 2002, Fritsch and Mueller 2008). Since some factors influencing entrepreneurship exist on national level (i.e. policies, regulations, rules), the regional differences in entrepreneurship can be rather explained by the impact of subnational institutional and particularly individual factors (Stam 2007, Henrekson and Johansson 2011). Hence we assume that the spatial differences in entrepreneurship might be explained by abilities and aspirations of young entrepreneurs as well as by the institutional environment in which they are embedded.

The theoretical background of the entrepreneurial abilities and aspirations is based on the national system of entrepreneurship (Acs et al. 2014) which has been developed further on the regional level during the first REDI (Regional Entrepreneurial and Development Index) project (Szerb et al. 2014, Komlósi et al. 2015). The first wave of REDI scores represented significant differences in entrepreneurial systems among regions CEE and NWE regions and this result has been confirmed also by the second wave (Szerb et al. 2017).

The different pillars of REDI are calculated from individual and institutional variables. In order to investigate young firms’ entrepreneurial abilities and aspirations, we use firm level data from Regional Dataset of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) for the period 2007–2014, as well as data on institutional environment collected in the frame of REDI projects. Since empirical findings from the literature proves that firms operating in high technology sectors may have higher chance to survive as well as effect on economic development, the presence of young firms’ in high and medium tech sectors is involved as dependent variable.

According to the scores of REDI Index and earlier finding in literature, it is assumed that
• there is a significant relationship between the entrepreneurial abilities and aspirations and the stage of regional development;
• the entrepreneurial abilities and aspirations are differing in time and they may have higher impact in post-crisis period (2011–2014);
• there might be significant differences among CEE and NWE regions in terms of entrepreneurial abilities and aspirations;
• the abilities and aspirations of CEE entrepreneurs being active in “high and medium impact sectors” are rather similar to NWE entrepreneurs.

Florian Noseleit (p)

Women carry on to provide more household work compared to men despite increasing female labor force participation. This inequality in household production can be considered an informal institution that may affect occupational choices of women. This paper argues that such informal institutional arrangements cause adverse selection into self-employment among women since self-employment offers more flexible ways to combine household production and labor force participation. However, formal institutions like childcare arrangements may reduce such adverse selection. We hypothesize that childcare availability in a certain region influences the selection of females into self-employment. Our empirical evidence suggests that better childcare availability causes fewer women to enter self-employment but those that enter tend to have more formal education, employ more often employees, and are on average happier.

Paolo Malfitano (p)

In the last decades, immigrant self-employment and entrepreneurial activity became a huge source of interest for academic research. Self-employment capacity is often considered as an important aspect for the economic integration of immigrants in their host country, since immigrant self-employed play a “social hinge” role. Previous research found evidence for over-representation of immigrants in self-employment in several countries, compared to natives. Switzerland represents a peculiar case, immigrants were not allowed to start a business (except in particular cases) before the European Union bilateral agreements, in effect 1 June 2002. Thus, even today, immigrants’ propensity to be self-employed is lower. Following previous microeconomic frameworks, I assume that family wealth and human capital is transferred across generations and that family’s entrepreneurial background influences the ability to become self-employed, e.g. children of self-employed parents inherit skills, knowledge, managerial expertise that increases the probability of being self-employed. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that the intergenerational transmission varies between immigrant and native parents. Firstly, the likelihood that a person succeeds in self-employment depends in part on the human capital, he or she receives from a self-employed father/mother and the amount of that human capital may differ from one ancestry group to another. Secondly, immigrants have different self-employment traditions in their home country and self-employment behavior in the home country affects their propensities as newcomers and consequently, their siblings’ propensities. The main aim of my research is to shed light on the mechanism explaining the intergenerational transmission of self-employment in Switzerland. In particular, the first important goal is to measure the effect of having a self-employed parent and parental assets on individuals’ propensity of being self-employed. The second aim is to understand if having an immigrant father and/or mother affects the offspring’s self-employment propensity and if this effect is different between national origins. In order to address these issues, I use SHP data survey (2003-2015) and include a large set of regressors to take into account the determinants and different aspects of intergenerational transmission of self-employment propensity among both immigrants and natives. Based on the theoretical framework, I estimate a time fixed effect logit model. Preliminary results show that there is a negative and statistically significant marginal effect (at mean) in self-employment propensity among first-generation immigrants, compared to natives. This effect is positive and statistically significant for second-generation immigrants, while it is not statistically significant for natives with immigration background.

Sheng Liu (p), Sierdjan Koster

Since China’s government enacted the economic reform to establish a market economy, self-employment is seen as an important source of economic growth and labour market improvement. And, indeed, self-employment rates have risen importantly in China in the last decade. Self-employment, and with it the impact on economic development, is heterogeneous and to assess the potential influence of the self-employment boom in the Chinese economy, understanding the heterogeneity of self-employment is crucial. This study assesses the heterogeneity in self-employment and its characteristics, drawing from the Chinese community household survey household survey from 2012. We distinguish three groups of self-employed workers: Manual, Non-Manual and Employers and we benchmark the groups against employees. We find distinct differences in terms of demographics, family background, income, location and individual attitudes among the self-employment groups. These differences help in further understanding the characteristics of the self-employment boom in China – who is involved and its geography – and consequently its impact on economic development.