From unemployment to self-employment: The role of entrepreneurship training

Michaelides Marios () and Davis Scott
Additional contact information
Michaelides Marios: Department of Economics, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, American Institutes of Research, Washington, D.C., USA
Davis Scott: Department of Economics, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, American Institutes of Research, Washington, D.C., USA

IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2020, vol. 10, issue 1, 35

Abstract: We present experimental evidence on the effects of entrepreneurship training for unemployed workers in the U.S. at two different stages in the business cycle. In the context of a strong economy, training helped training participants – particularly those with prior self-employment experience – to start a business and become self-employed, while it may have persuaded others to pursue salary employment instead. During the Great Recession, training helped training participants become self-employed, particularly those with no prior self-employment experience. Regardless of economic conditions, positive impacts on self-employment were partly or largely offset by reductions in regular employment. These findings indicate that entrepreneurship training may help unemployed workers to become self-employed at different stages of the business cycle, but there is weak evidence that it can be an effective policy for combating unemployment, particularly during recessions.

Keywords: Great Recession; self-employment; entrepreneurship; start-up; small business; entrepreneurship training; unemployment; policy evaluation; reemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H4 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2020-0018 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:izajlp:v:10:y:2020:i:1:p:35:n:1

DOI: 10.2478/izajolp-2020-0018

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Policy is currently edited by Denis Fougère, Juan F. Jimeno and Núria Rodríguez-Planas

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Policy from Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().