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Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics

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

Journal Article
Reference
Aldén, Lina, Spencer Bastani and Mats Hammarstedt (2021). “Ethnic Background and the Value of Self-Employment Experience: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment”. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 83(6), 1287–1310. doi.org/10.1111/obes.12454

Authors
Lina Aldén, Spencer Bastani, Mats Hammarstedt

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.

Spencer Bastani

+46 (0)18 471 7077
+46 (0)73 150 7751
spencer.bastani@ifau.uu.se

Mats Hammarstedt

+46 (0)77 228 80 00
+46 (0)730 619 194
mats.hammarstedt@ifn.se