Do Employers Value Entrepreneurial Human Capital? An Empirical Study of Post-Self-Employment Wages

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of self-employment experience on post-self-employment wages and uses the number of self-employment spells to distinguish the relative importance of pull or push factors for entry into self-employment. Workers with a single spell in self-employment have unemployment histories, self-employment durations, education and likelihood of professional occupations that conform better to the archetypical entrepreneur, while individuals with multiple spells in self-employment appear more likely to have been pushed into self-employment due to poor wage market opportunities. Repeaters receive higher returns to self-employment experience than to wage experience and nonrepeaters receive much lower returns to their self-employment experience.