The supposed creativity of left-handed and dyslexic individuals may fit well with an entrepreneurial occupation. Empirical evidence from two representative Dutch samples, however, shows that left-handed and dyslexic individuals are not more likely to be(come) entrepreneurs than right-handed and...

This paper analyzes heterogeneity among the self-employed in 74 developing countries, representing two-thirds of the population of the developing world. After profiling how worker characteristics vary by employment status, it classifies self-employed workers outside agriculture as...

We analyze the determinants of reading literacy, mathematical skills and science skills of young immigrant children in The Netherlands. We find that these are affected by age at immigration and whether or not one of the parents is native Dutch.

Using the interaction of language of country of birth and age-at-arrival as instruments, we find strong evidence of a causal effect of English as Additional Language (EAL) on the native–immigrant wage gap for male employees in the UK.

Is India’s high fractionalization associated with mistrust between its two main religious communities? An inter-ethnic trust game field experiment confirms intergroup bias in mutually lower offers between urban Muslims and Hindus in Mumbai. There are no differences in trustworthiness based on...

This study quantifies the disadvantage in literacy skills that arises from the linguistic distance between their mother tongue and host country language, combining individual cross-country data on literacy scores with unique information on the linguistic distance between languages.

This paper examines differences in employment rates between persons with and without disabilities in 15 developing countries using the World Health Survey (WHS). We find that people with disabilities have lower employment rates than persons without disabilities in nine countries. Across...

This paper examines an adaptive strategy using occupational choice that can be undertaken by household members in urban poor areas to help ensure their access to food. Our investigation focuses on self-employed women and men in 14 predominantly slum communities in Bolivia, Ecuador, Philippines,...

How did family characteristics affect women and men differently in self-employment participation in urban China? Analyses of national data show dual marriage penalties for women. Marketization made married women more vulnerable to lay-offs from state-sector jobs; their likelihood of being pushed...

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...