Determinants of Self-Employment

ISBN-13: 9783790806939 / Angielski / Miękka / 1993 / 194 str.

Gerrit de Wit

Opis

This book is the result of five years of research that I carried out as a research fellow at the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics of the University of Amsterdam. The project was initiated in 1986 by Frans van Winden and Roy Thurik. Frans van Winden became interested in self employment through his work concerning government behavior. In the models that he employs, the government is influenced by various social groups, the political strength of which is related to their size. As one of these is the group of self-employed individuals, he became interested in determinants of the size of this group. Roy Thurik was professionally interested in the subject because of his work at the Research Institute for Small and Medium-sized Business in the Netherlands (EIM), an institute that does much research in this area. Together, they wrote a proposal for a research project, for which they received funding from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs . These funds were supplemented by the University of Amsterdam and at a later stage by the Organization for the Advancement of Research in the Economic Discipline (ECOZOEK), that is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). This support is gratefully acknowiedged. The commercial edition of this book was partIy financed by the Centre for Energy Conservation and Environmental Technology (CE), the Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decisionmaking (CREED), and the University of Amsterdam."

Spis treści

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Relevance of the subject.- 1.2 The definition of self-employment.- 1.3 Determinants of self-employment in the literature.- 1.3.1 Firm oriented studies.- 1.3.2 Person oriented studies.- 1.3.3 Firm and person oriented studies.- 1.4 Outline of the book.- 2 Models of self-employment in a competitive market.- 2.1 The basic model.- 2.2 Different entrepreneurial abilities.- 2.3 The choice of wage-employment.- 2.4 Capital requirements.- 2.5 Demand uncertainty.- 2.6 Cost uncertainty.- 2.7 Dynamical models.- 2.8 The influence of taxation.- 2.9 Conclusion.- 3 An m-sector, n-group behavioral model of self-employment.- 3.1 Contributions of the model with respect to the literature.- 3.2 The model.- 3.2.1 Qualitative description.- 3.2.2 Production.- 3.2.3 Utility functions and risk attitude.- 3.2.4 Taxation.- 3.2.5 Occupational choice.- 3.2.6 Product demand and the supply of capital and labor.- 3.2.7 Solution of the model.- 3.3 Comparative statics in the 1-sector, n-group model.- 3.3.1 Results.- 3.3.2 Explanation of results.- 3.4 Comparative statics in the m-sector, 2-group model.- 3.4.1 Results.- 3.4.2 Explanation of results.- 3.5 Sensitivity of results.- 3.6 Conclusion.- 4 Intermezzo. Investigations of a certain class of linear complementarity problems.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Solvability of LCP’s of class A.- 4.3 Some graph theoretic concepts.- 4.4 Some features of the class of matrices ?.- 4.5 Characterizations of solutions of LCP’s of class A.- 4.6 A sufficient condition for uniqueness.- 4.7 Major findings and discussion.- 4.8 Importance of the results for the model of self-employment.- Appendix A.- Appendix B.- 5 From the general-equilibrium model to a probabilistic-choice model.- 5.1 An alternative production function.- 5.2 Consequences for the model.- 5.3 The probabilistic-choice model.- 5.4 Conclusion.- 6 Two empirical applications.- 6.1 Comparable empirical studies.- 6.2 The model.- 6.3 Empirical application using the Brabant survey.- 6.3.1 Description of the data set.- 6.3.2 Specification of the variables.- 6.3.3 Empirical results.- 6.4 Empirical application using the economists survey.- 6.4.1 Description of the survey.- 6.4.2 Specification of the variables.- 6.4.3 Empirical results.- 6.5 Conclusion.- 7 Nomenklatura, state monopoly and private enterprise.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 The basic model.- 7.3 The choice between the two regimes.- 7.4 The impact of taxation.- 7.5 Political pluralism.- 7.6 Conclusion.- 8 Summary.- References.- Author index.- List of symbols.