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Small Business Economics

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08-06-2019

How do country R&D change the allocation of self-employment across different types?

Authors: Andrew Burke, Serhiy Lyalkov, Ana Millán, José María Millán, André van Stel

Published in: Small Business Economics | Issue 2/2021

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Abstract

We investigate the impact of country R&D on the allocation of self-employment across different types, where types are identified based on occupational status and start-up motive. We first conduct a literature review based on which we consider the self-employed with employees to be of higher ‘quality’ (in terms of their overall contribution to the economy) compared with independent own-account workers, who in turn may be considered of higher quality than dependent self-employed workers. Similarly, we also consider opportunity self-employed to be of higher quality than necessity self-employed. Our empirical analysis then shows that the level of a country’s R&D expenditures increases the share of self-employed with employees and that of opportunity self-employed (i.e. the self-employment types associated with higher quality) at the cost of the shares of dependent self-employed and necessity self-employed. Higher R&D expenditures at the country level thus increase the quality of self-employment in the country.

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The more relevant traditional and recent approaches are (i) innovative against imitative entrepreneurs (Schumpeter 1912); (ii) productive, unproductive and destructive entrepreneurs (Baumol 1990); (iii) self-employed with or without employees (Carrasco 1999); (iv) dependent against independent self-employment (Burchell et al. 1999); (v) opportunity against necessity entrepreneurs (Reynolds et al. 2002); (vi) providing versus enabling entrepreneurship (Burke 2012) and (vii) the distinction between several engagement levels in the entrepreneurial process (Van der Zwan et al. 2010).

Thus, most previous studies focus on a single country (e.g. CRSE 2017). The only conditional analysis that characterizes dependent self-employed workers, compared with self-employed and paid employed in a cross-country comparable setting is the work by Millán and Millán (2017). Another related conditional analysis is that by Millán et al. (2018), which which compares job satisfaction of independent own-account works and dependent self-employed workers. Also interesting is the work by Lyalkov et al. (2019), where the interrelation between the share of the self-employed workforce in a given country that can be considered ‘entrepreneurial’ and trademark registration at the country level is explored. In this work, both necessity entrepreneurs and dependent self-employed workers are considered ‘non-entrepreneurial’ types.

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Title: How do country R&D change the allocation of self-employment across different types?
Authors: Andrew Burke
Serhiy Lyalkov
Ana Millán
José María Millán
André van Stel
Publication date: 08-06-2019
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Small Business Economics / Issue 2/2021
Print ISSN: 0921-898X
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0913
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00196-z

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