Self-employment in the global economy

Arbeitspapier

This paper studies the eff ects of foreign competition on self-employment levels. We begin by pointing out a previously unknown fact: the greater the exposure to foreign competition, the smaller the fraction of self-employed people. This fact holds across very different countries, across relatively similar countries like European Union members, and across industries within the United States. We develop a model where heterogeneous agents select themselves into being either employees or self-employed in the spirit of Lucas (1978). This, in turn, translates into intra-industry firm heterogeneity as in Melitz (2003). Self-employed agents (firms) can also decide to enter into the export markets, subject to fixed and variable trade costs. The model delivers three basic predictions: (1) domestic self-employment increases with the trade costs of exporting from a foreign country to the home country, (2) domestic self-employment increases with the trade costs of exporting to the foreign country, and (3) higher levels of self-employment are associated with a lower fraction of exporting firms. Our empirical work on inter-industry data for the United States confirms these predictions of the model.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Papers ; No. 11-5

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation ; Trade and Labor Market Interactions ; Labor Demand
• Thema: self-employment ; tariffs ; international trade ; Selbstständige ; Internationaler Wettbewerb ; Welt

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Díez, Federico J. ; Ozdagli, Ali K.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
• (wo): Boston, MA
• (wann): 2011

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/55621
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ