Sierdjan Koster (p)

Michael Fritsch

Since the 1990s, self-employment has increased rapidly in the Netherlands. Currently, over 15% of the labour force population is registered as self-employed. The growth in self-employment can be almost fully attributed to the rise of solo self-employment, firms with only one person involved. In fact, the number of employing firms has remained stable since the 1990s. Even though the solo self-employed represent a large, and growing group, they remain an understudied phenomenon. Similarly, solo self-employed typically do not have a well-developed position in economic policies, perhaps as a result of the large heterogeneity within the group. In addition, solo self-employed, by definition have little direct effect on employment generation. That having said, the sheer size of the group in the Netherlands make them a relevant topic of research. Also, they may collectively improve regional economic performance, for example through improving flexibility to larger firms. In a more general sense, understanding solo self-employment in the Netherlands may inform the broader trend of flexible work contracts that underlie the platform economy, for example.

As such, it is relevant to understand the characteristics and the economic role of solo self-employed. This study then explores the regional patterns in solo self-employment in the Netherlands and it addresses the heterogeneity in the group as well as the regional differences of different types of solo self-employment. This informs local policy making towards solo self-employment. In more general terms, it contributes to our understanding of the spatially diverse effects of flexible labour market arrangements.

Martin Andersson (p), Johan P Larsson , Ozge Oner

Michael Fritsch

We explore the effects of neighborhood-level ethnic enclaves on the propensity of immigrants to use business ownership as a vehicle to transcend from labor market outsiders to insiders. We exploit an exogenously partitioned grid of geocoded 1-by-1 km squares to approximate neighborhoods, and match it with Swedish full-population data from 2011-2012 to study immigrants from the Middle East. We demonstrate a robust tendency for people to leave non-employment for self-employment if many members of the neighborhood ethnic diaspora are business owners, while we observe weak effects emanating from business ownership in other groups. Net of these effects, the overall scale of the enclave, measured by local concentration of co-ethnic peers, negatively influences the propensity to become self-employed. The results are consistent with the argument that it is not the scale, but the quality of local ethnic enclaves that influence labor market outcomes for immigrants.

Attila Varga (p), László Szerb (p), Tamás Sebestyén, Norbert Szabó

Michael Fritsch

Recent findings suggest that policies supporting entrepreneurship should be considered in the palette of public interventions promoting economic growth. Despite the growing evidence, it is still unknown to what extent a given policy intervention would affect economic growth in a particular country or region and how these effects might change over time. These effects can be estimated with economic impact models. GMR-Europe is the first available model that estimates the economic impacts of entrepreneurship policy. In this paper we introduce the most recent version of GMR-Europe. To illustrate the capacity of the model the paper provides a detailed policy impact assessment analysis.