Abstract
This article addresses ongoing debates about whether the welfare state hinders or fosters self-employment. Starting a business can be an inherently risky undertaking and is thus not a feasible option for all people. Policies that have the potential to shoulder some of this risk can be particularly important for the decision to enter into self-employment. Taking individual differences in terms of risk tolerance into account, we focus on unemployment protection for the self-employed ? a type of risk which is particularly difficult to privately insure oneself against ? in order to investigate the ways in which policy can shape people?s perceptions of self-employment. We combine individual-level data from a 2009 Flash Eurobarometer survey with country-level data on unemployment policies in Europe in a multilevel design, finding that the presence of unemployment protection for the self-employed positively influences individual perceptions of the feasibility of self-employment. Risk-tolerant individuals, moreover, are found to be even more likely to assess self-employment as a feasible option in countries that offer unemployment protection to the self-employed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 5 |
| Journal | Journal of European Social Policy |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Pages (from-to) | 143-160 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| ISSN | 0958-9287 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2018 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Personality
- risk
- self-employment
- unemployment insurance
- welfare policy
