We examine the efficacy of providing self-employment training to unemployed and other individuals interested in self-employment using data from Project GATE. This experimental design program offered self-employment training services to a random sample of individuals who expressed a strong...

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...

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study examines the impact of high school cohort composition on the educational and labor market outcomes of individuals during their early 20s and again during their late 20s and early 30s. We find that having more high...

Combining large (up to 25%) extracts of five French censuses and data from Labor Force Surveys for 1968–1999, we use Borjas' (2003) factor proportions methodology for France and find that a 10 p.p. increase in the immigrant share raises natives' wages by 3.3%, which is in stark contrast with...

This paper studies the occupational choices of highly educated native-born American males and links their choices to cultural attitudes toward pecuniary rewards and social prestige in their ancestral countries. These cultural attitudes were reported in the World Values Survey, which surveyed...

I study the interaction between discrimination and investment using a directed search model where firms decide the capital intensity of their production technologies before being matched. Discrimination makes some workers cheap to hire. As a consequence, some firms might save on capital costs...

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...

We analyse how educational attainment and employment protection influence an individual's decision to become self-employed. By altering expected income from dependent employment, employment protection is likely to affect an individual's choice of occupation, although such a link has not been...