This paper examines the interrelations between self-employment and unemployment rates for Spain in the period 1972-2004, comparing them with the general pattern observed for OECD countries. We apply the model as proposed by Audretsch, Carree, van Stel and Thurik (2005) to Spain. The divergence...

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between self-employment and unemployment rates. On the one hand, high unemployment rates may lead to start-up activity of self-employed individuals (the 'refugee' effect). On the other hand, higher rates of self employment may indicate increased...

quarter of 2012, almost three percentage points higher than one year earlier and almost 12 percentage points higher than at the end of 2008. Although the exponential growth of Spanish unemployment is mainly caused by a lower demand for labor, there is also a second cause, viz. an increased...

Most entrepreneurship theory depicts disequilibrium as the most common state for entrepreneurial activity and yet remarkably very little empirical research investigates the role of entry and exit in this type of external environment. Drawing on economics and organizational ecology we outline...

Globalization and an increasing importance of knowledge in the production process cause many developed countries to move from a more ‘managed’ to a more ‘entrepreneurial’ economy in recent decades. In the former type of economy, large and incumbent firms play a dominant role, exploiting...

Spain is destroying more jobs than any other European country. In the third quarter of 2009, the unemployment rate stood at 17.9%, the second-highest rate in the 27-nation EU and the highest rate in the euro area (EA-16). The exponential growth of the Spanish unemployment rate is the by-product...

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...