Ethnic Background and the Value of Self-Employment Experience: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Arbeitspapier

In this paper, we use a randomized field experiment in Sweden to investigate how self-employment experience is valued in the labor market. We find that self-employment experience negatively impacts the probability of receiving a positive response from employers. For male applicants, this holds regardless of their ethnic background, and independently of whether we consider applicants with experience solely from self-employment, or applicants with a mix of experience from wage-employment and self-employment. For female applicants, the results are less clear-cut. Our findings provide input into the discussion about the impact of self-employment on the chances for natives and immigrants to obtain wage-employment.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IFN Working Paper ; No. 1369

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Labor Discrimination ; Entrepreneurship
• Subject: Self-employment ; Wage-employment ; Randomized experiment ; Discrimination ; Labor market outcomes

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Aldén, Lina ; Bastani, Spencer ; Hammarstedt, Mats
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
• (where): Stockholm
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/240512
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET