Does self-employment measure entrepreneurship? evidence from Great Britain

Faggio, Giulia and Silva, Olmo (2012) Does self-employment measure entrepreneurship? evidence from Great Britain. SERC Discussion Papers (SERCDP0109). Spatial Economics Research Centre (SERC), London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

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Abstract

Research on entrepreneurship often uses information on self-employment to proxy for business creation and innovative behaviour. However, little evidence has been collected on the link between these measures. In this paper, we use data from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) combined with data from the Business Structure Database (BSD), and the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) to study the relation between self-employment, business creation and innovation. In order to do so, we aggregate individual and firm-level data at the Travel-to-Work Area (TTWA) and investigate how the incidence of self-employment correlates with the density of business start-ups and innovative firms. Our results show that in urban areas a higher incidence of self-employment positively and strongly correlates with more business creation and innovation, but this is not true for rural areas. Further analysis suggests that this urban/rural divide is related to lack of employment opportunities in rural areas, which might push some workers into self-employment as a last resort option.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/SERC/publication...
Additional Information:	© 2012 The Authors
Divisions:	Geography & Environment Spatial Economics Research Centre Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Time Allocation, Work Behavior, and Employment Determination and Creation; Human Capital; Retirement > J21 - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure L - Industrial Organization > L2 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior > L20 - General R - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics > R1 - General Regional Economics > R12 - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade R - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R23 - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
Date Deposited:	16 Jul 2014 12:27
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 23:28
Funders:	Economic and Social Research Council, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), Welsh Assembly Government
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/57919

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