Characteristics of self-employment among university graduates

In this article, we investigate the characteristics of nonagricultural self-employment (SE) among university graduates in Austria. Probit regressions based on 380 000 observations from the country's 2001 population census indicate that the probability of choosing SE rises significantly with age. We find that men are more likely to be entrepreneurs than women. There are also strong sectoral and regional effects, such as higher probabilities in rural areas. Furthermore, we observe a significant link between the propensity to be self-employed and the type of university degree. Our findings concerning the relationship between citizenship and SE indicate that highly-skilled immigrants from low-wage countries are less likely to be entrepreneurs than native-born citizens and graduates from high-wage countries.