By considering entrepreneurs who hire employees – employers – and entrepreneurs without personnel – own-account workers – as related but distinct groups within entrepreneurship, this work analyzes the roles of different factors in entrepreneurship survival in Europe from a new...

As several European governments develop new start-up programmes during recessions, the appropriateness of these policies recently has become a hot policy issue. This study suggests that the contribution of these incentives is dubious, if aimed to combat economic and jobs crises as part of the...

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to shed new light on the effects of labor market institutions and the economic conditions on self-employment composition that may help the development of a comprehensive strategy to promote job creation and sustained economic growth in the post-2009...

This paper examines the impact of employment protection legislation (EPL) on hiring decisions by own-account workers and firing decisions by very small firms (one to four employees). Using data from the EU-15 countries, our results show that the strictness of employment protection legislation is...

Work effort varies greatly across employees, as evidenced by substantial differences in absence rates. Moreover, absenteeism causes sizeable output losses. Using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), this paper investigates absence behaviour of family employees, i.e. workers...