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This paper uses a representative sample of U.S. workers to examine how self-employment may reduce work-life conflict. We find that self-employment prevents work from interfering with life (WIL), especially among women, but it heightens the tendency for life to interfere with work (LIW). We show that self-employment is connected to WIL and LIW by different causal mechanisms. The self-employed experience less WIL because they have more autonomy and control over the duration and timing of work. Working at home is the most important reason the self-employed experience more LIW than wage and salary workers.

There is growing political interest in new forms of precarious self‐employment located in a “grey area” between employment and self‐employment. A wide range of concepts has been used to debate this issue, and this paper aims to clarify these debates through the concept of involuntary self‐employment.

The paper reviews the empirical, conceptual and legal‐policy approaches to involuntary self‐employment via three country case studies in Finland, Germany and the UK. A range of relevant domestic academic literature, articles in the media, selected key expert interviews, and policy and legal documents are employed.

Conceptual clarity regarding involuntary self‐employment is achieved through a discussion of two aspects of the phenomenon: the characteristics of involuntariness from a motives‐based perspective, and the legal/economic perspectives and policy issues. The motives‐based analysis argues that involuntariness as such does not seem to have severe implications on the individuals' well being, given that the individual earns a satisfactory livelihood from her or his business activities. The discussion of the characteristics of and regulation related to working arrangements in the “grey area” between employment and self‐employment, where the self‐employed individual is strongly dependent on the principal, shows that it is very difficult to regulate quasi self‐employment without harming “voluntary” forms of enterprise and inter‐firm cooperation at the same time.

The key contribution of the paper is to facilitate a foundation for subsequent empirical research and policy development.

The recent economic crisis in Spain is felt most severely in the labour market. The purpose of this paper is to examine job satisfaction among the occupied workers according to their job types throughout the ongoing economic cycle comparing the period of boom and that of bust.

Surprisingly, the average job satisfaction has stayed virtually constant between the two periods, which suggests the existence of compensating forces operating among the occupied population. The authors find first the compositional change of working population, such as a decreasing proportion of temporary contract workers had only small effects, unable to explain the puzzle. The authors also find that macroeconomic conditions affect workers’ job satisfaction differently by the type of workers or jobs. In fact, high-level managerial workers and self-employed employers have suffered a significantly large reduction in their job satisfaction during the crisis while some other types of workers such as ordinary employees have enjoyed increased job satisfaction. In order to explore the causes of these differences, the authors examine the satisfaction in different job domains.

The results suggest that in the case of self-employed, decrease in job satisfaction with respect to wages job stability superior evaluation is significant and the promotion prospect is not relevant for self-employed, while for managerial workers, the only significant decrease is due to superior evaluation.

The Spanish data with a reasonable sample size which include information on job satisfaction are the Spanish Survey of Life Quality at Work. Unfortunately, the survey is not longitudinal, therefore unable to examine the factors affecting transitions in satisfaction level or to control for fixed individual effects, and the data only cover until 2010. Further investigation including more recent data and data from other countries would be helpful to better understand the consequences of economic crisis on job satisfaction.

This paper contributes in two ways. First, the authors show what has been happening to the job-related well-being during the recession in Spain by the type of workers: high-level managers, managers, self-employed and employees. Job satisfaction can be determined by pressures to work harder and longer hours, reduced wages, lower promotion possibility and higher layoff probability, and all of them could have been changed by the economic crisis. Consequently, the second contribution is to analyse different dimensions of job satisfaction as satisfaction with wages, flexibility, stability, stress and promotion to determine the causes of the changes in average level of job satisfaction.

Discusses the long existing and confusing problems of establishing the relationship of who is, and who if not, a dependent worker. Reflects developments which have occurred in British law as it affects the employment field, plus an evaluation and analysis of some of the different types of employment relationships which have evolved by examining, where possible, the status of each of these relationships. Concludes that the typical worker nowadays finds himself in a vulnerable position both economically and psychologically owing to the insecurity which exists.

Recent findings by Hamilton (Journal of Political Economy, 2000) suggest that the self-employed do not receive a monetary premium for the risk and uncertainty associated with business ownership. The purpose of this paper is to show that income underreporting by entrepreneurs can explain the lack of evidence for monetary premia. Using a large national data set (Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)), the author first document evidences of underreporting, and then proceed to make alternative comparisons using measures of consumption. The author finds that the self-employed enjoy large earnings premia that are reflected in their consumption.

Using PSID the author creates and analyzes a household level data set comparing monetary rewards of self-employment to those of wage work. The author employs previous findings about entrepreneurial saving behavior to show, via quintile regression analysis, consumption rewards to entrepreneurship, and compare those rewards to income rewards.

The author finds self-employed enjoying significant consumption premia, over the income premia, throughout the income distribution. Contrary to previous claims (e.g. see Hamilton, 2000) the author finds that self-employment is a financially rewarding undertaking. Due to different income reporting metrics and tax exemption structure entrepreneurs enjoy even larger monetary rewards when compared to wage workers along consumption axis. In light of these findings the paper proposes consumption, rather than income metrics, to be applied when quantifying rewards to self-employment.

Household level of analysis is a major drawback in using this approach. This is an outcome of consumption data collected and reported on household rather than individual income. Because of this limitation transitions into and out of self-employment cannot be separated from household changes, i.e., divorces and marriages. However, divorces and marriages are assumed to not have systematic component favoring wage workers or self-employed.

Significant resources are allocated toward supporting entrepreneur. Small business administration, congress, state agencies, and community development corporations contentiously outline both risks associated with failure rates and low rewards to self-employment. This paper provides policymakers with better tools for assessment of true monetary rewards. Better assessment of true rewards, especially contrasting corporations vs individual earnings in self-employment should enable the policymakers to provide better support for the entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur, in social light, is perceived as a much more successful individual. This view differs with recent data. Previously overly naive positive estimate of entrepreneur has been attributed to the bias of survival. This paper provides additional support for social view of entrepreneur by pointing to an overlooked, by the policymakers and most researchers, information segment – consumption data. These additional benefits that have been well understood by the public can now be substantiated for the policymakers.

This paper develops unique method for documenting monetary rewards to entrepreneurship. Using information about entrepreneurial saving behavior this paper demonstrates significant monetary premia, over reported income premia enjoyed by entrepreneurs. The premia is documented throughout income distribution and is not an outcome of entrepreneurial superstars or even average entrepreneur.

This paper studies the entrepreneurial undertaking and economic success of immigrants and natives in Germany, namely the West Germans, the East Germans, the guestworkers, and other immigrants.

The paper studies factors that affect the sorting of individuals into self‐employment and investigate whether the self‐employed fare better than the paid‐employed, and whether self‐employed immigrants fare better than Germans. Employing data from the German Socioeconomic Panel both the probability to choose self‐employment through a probit and the selection adjusted earnings are estimated.

The paper finds that the probability of self‐employment increases significantly with age for all ethnicity groups. More education and a self‐employed father propel self‐employment choices for West Germans only. Immigrants are rather pushed into self‐employment to avoid unemployment; however, they are able to traverse the socioeconomic gap through self‐employment. Except for the East Germans, the self‐employed earn more than their salaried counterparts, and immigrants fare the best, having the highest earnings of all groups. For immigrants, entrepreneurship maybe a way of “making” it in the new country. While self‐employment is a lucrative choice for immigrants, their rates remain low.

This study produces new empirical evidence on the importance of the self‐employment sector in Germany, where individuals fare well and where immigrants can achieve earnings over‐assimilation compared to natives and higher occupational prestige.

Controversy in the literature exists over whether self-employment is driven by worker’s deliberate entrepreneurial choices (pull factors) or an indeliberate subsistence employment option (push factors) in developing countries. It is therefore very important to investigate whether the self-employed are the dynamic entrepreneurial group or the subsistence-oriented group. In this chapter, the authors examine the driving forces behind the plausible growth of self-employment in urban and rural Nigeria by analyzing the self-employment choices as a function of employment’s differences in predicted earnings, human capital, demographic and family characteristics. Using the 2010/2011 and 2012/2013 waves of the General Household Survey Panel data for Nigeria, this chapter utilizes the Random Effects Regression Models (OLS and Probit Models). This chapter finds that the predicted individual earning differences between self- and paid-employment has a negative significant effect on self-employment choices – contrary to developed countries’ evidence. In other words, overwhelmingly the poor are “entrepreneurs.” This therefore means that self-employment choice is driven by the necessity of survival – the subsistence self-employed groups rather than the dynamic entrepreneurial hypothesis. The implication of these finding is unique and interesting for an African country such as Nigeria where the self-employees are vulnerable to poverty and perhaps an involuntary employment option conditioned by economic failures.

Using unique register data for Sweden we match self-employed persons to their employees. The purpose of the paper is to investigate which factors that influence the composition of the workforce in terms of national background. To analyse workforce composition we estimate the probability of only employing co-nationals in the firm. A majority of the self-employed do not have employees so the used sample constitutes a small share of all self-employed. To account for the selection in the choice of having employees we estimate a selection model of Heckman type.

We find that a higher share of immigrants in the municipality increases the probability of hiring immigrants, both for native and immigrant self-employed. We also find that the probability for immigrants to only employ co-nationals decreases with time spent in Sweden. These results point to that the proximity to people from the same region and one's network plays an important part for the employment decisions for the self-employed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate alternative measures to better understand and measure success for self-employed mothers in addition to the usual financial indicators.

The present study is a comparative analysis of time spent at work and undertaking childcare by female workers with children in Spain between 2009 and 2010, using a combination of descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis based on the Time-Use Survey 2009-2010.

The results of the paper indicate that self-employed working mothers tend to spend more time with their children when these are under the age of ten, and that they work longer hours than salaried mothers.

This paper has some limitations due to the quantitative approach to secondary data. Further qualitative research could clarify some of the findings; moreover the study is based on Spain, so extending to other countries would help validate the results.

Policy makers, in general – but more specifically in high unemployment scenarios – can facilitate self-employment for both men and women to reduce unemployment and to offer workers the prospect of a more balanced life.

This research contributes to the existing literature, which fosters a more holistic approach to the analysis of female-run ventures by measuring performance using not only economic indicators, but also personal achievements.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether the usual positive effect of self-employment on job satisfaction remains once the greater autonomy and flexibility afforded by self-employment have been factored in, as well as the existence of differences in unobserved characteristics across individuals.

It may be thought that the probability of being self-employed and the declared job satisfaction are not independent from each other due to differences in unobserved characteristics – as psychological or personality traits – across individuals. Therefore, self-employment should be treated as an endogenous variable when it is introduced as an explanatory variable in a job satisfaction equation. Given this, the paper proposes the estimation of a treatment effect model in which self-employment and job satisfaction equations are estimated jointly.

The results suggest that the usual positive effect of self-employment on job satisfaction is due to the greater work autonomy afforded by self-employment, and not to the greater willingness of the self-employed to report higher levels of satisfaction. Thus, the paper finds that once flexibility and autonomy are considered, the usual positive effect of self-employment on job satisfaction disappears and becomes negative.

It would be useful further empirical analysis using other data, especially panel data, to test the robustness of the results.

The paper proposes an alternative way to analyse the relation between self-employment and job satisfaction by taking into account both the greater autonomy and flexibility afforded by self-employment, as well as psychological or personality traits.