Four Essays on Self-Employment

Abstract: Wage-Earners who Become Self-Employed: The Impact of Income and wages Does the relation between actual and expected income affect the decision to become self-employed? Wage-earners who receive an actual income that is different from the expected, both lower and higher, are more likely to become self-employed than wage-earners who receive an actual income close to the expected. Self-employed individuals who received a higher income than expected are more successful than other self-employed. Happiness and Health: Well-Being among the Self-EmployedIs well-being greater among the self-employed than among wage-earners? Indicators of well-being are: job satisfaction, life satisfaction, whether the job is stressful, whether the job is mentally straining, mental health problems, and poor general health. Conditional fixed effects logit models are estimated to control for selection. Self-employment increases both job and life satisfaction and it decreases the probability of finding the job mentally straining. Self-Employed Immigrants in Sweden: Are They as Successful as Natives?Do self-employed immigrants have lower incomes than self-employed natives? Income regressions are estimated using both OLS and quantile regressions. Immigrants receive significantly lower incomes than natives when controlling for individual characteristics and industry. The income differential is larger for non-Western immigrants than for Western immigrants. Quantile regressions show that the native-immigrant income gap is smaller at the top than at the bottom of the income distribution.Determinants of Exits from Self-EmploymentWhich groups are most likely to exit self-employment? Are there differences between groups regarding destination after self-employment? Young entrepreneurs, highly educated and self-employed who are also wage-earners are more likely to exit to paid employment. Women and non-Western immigrants are more likely to exit self-employment and become unemployed.