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Ethnic Background and the Value of Self‐Employment Experience: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment *
Author(s) -
Aldén Lina,
Bastani Spencer,
Hammarstedt Mats
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
oxford bulletin of economics and statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.131
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1468-0084
pISSN - 0305-9049
DOI - 10.1111/obes.12454
Subject(s) - ethnic group , self employment , wage , demographic economics , value (mathematics) , economics , labour economics , randomized experiment , field (mathematics) , psychology , political science , medicine , law , entrepreneurship , finance , machine learning , computer science , mathematics , pathology , pure mathematics
We use a randomized field experiment in Sweden to investigate how self‐employment experience is valued in the labour market. Our results show that self‐employment experience negatively impacts the likelihood of receiving a positive response from employers. For male applicants, this holds regardless of ethnic background, and independently of whether we consider applicants with experience solely from self‐employment, or applicants with combined 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 individuals with different ethnic background to obtain wage employment.