Using Self-employment as Proxy for Entrepreneurship: Some Empirical Caveats

Arbeitspapier

Research on entrepreneurship has received an increased amount of interest in recent years, with self-employment being used as the most common proxy for “entrepreneurship” in empirical studies. However, there are various ways of defining self-employment, making it a somewhat dubious proxy. This may flaw the analysis, especially in cross-country studies, since the documentation of data often is insufficient and difficult to access due to language barriers. We present an analysis of Swedish self-employment data. We show that the measurement of self-employment has changed over time to noticeably affect the reported number of self-employed in the two major statistical sources on self-employment. The reported development of self-employment sometimes differs diametrically depending on source. Sweden is occasionally erroneously reported to show the largest increase in self-employment in cross-country studies. Our study mimics the results of other country-specific analyses and we conclude that well-grounded conclusions require that the advantages and disadvantages of different statistical sources are recognized.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IFN Working Paper ; No. 845

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access ; Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data; Data Access ; Entrepreneurship ; New Firms; Startups
• Thema: Labor Force Survey ; RAMS ; Self-employed ; Self-employment ; Entrepreneurship ; Selbstständige ; Messung ; Unternehmer ; Arbeitskräfte ; Arbeitsmarktstatistik ; Schweden

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Bjuggren, Carl Magnus ; Johansson, Dan ; Stenkula, Mikael
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)
• (wo): Stockholm
• (wann): 2010

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/81411
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ