Computer and Internet use, especially in developing countries, has expanded rapidly in recent years. Even in light of this expansion in technology adoption rates, penetration rates differ markedly between developed and developing countries and across developing countries. To identify the...

We examine trends in self-employment among white and black men from 1910 to 1990 using Census and CPS microdata. Self-employment rates fell over most of the century and then started to rise after 1970. For white men, we find that the decline was due to declining rates within industries, but was...

A rapidly growing literature examines the impact of immigrants on the labor market outcomes of native-born Americans. However, the impact of immigration on natives in self-employment has not been examined, despite the over-representation of immigrants in that sector. We first present a new...

Previous studies tend to find that immigration has a weak negative effect on the employment and earnings of native-born workers. These studies generally overlook the effect of immigration on an important sector of the labor force, the self-employed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that immigrants,...

Using a recently released confidential dataset from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), we find some evidence of "white flight" from public schools into privateschools partly in response to minority schoolchildren. We also examine whether "white flight" is from all minorities...

One limitation of the recent research on the long-term costs of job displacement is its focus on individuals with established work histories. Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), the authors estimate the long-term costs of job displacement for young...

Theoretical models of self-employment posit that attitudes toward risk, entrepreneurial ability, and preferences for autonomy are central to the individual's decision between self-employment and wage/salary work. None of the studies in the rapidly growing empirical literature on self-employment,...

Academicians and policymakers have argued that self-employment provides a route out of poverty and an alternative to unemployment or discrimination in the labor market. Existing research, however, provides little evidence from longitudinal data on the relationship between business ownership and...

Using Current Population Survey (CPS) microdata, I examine trends and the causes of the trends from 1979 to 1998 in business ownership among several ethnic/racial groups in the United States. I find rapid growth rates for the number of self-employed blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans...

Recent research has concluded that the children of business owners are substantially more likely than others to become self-employed themselves. The authors of this study find that more than half of business owners in the confidential, restricted-access 1992 Characteristics of Business Owners...