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...

Cressy (2000) argues that the positive correlation between assets and the rate of business startups is due to DARA preferences. We show however that the required property is prudence, and prudence is consistent with DARA, IARA or CARA.