Nobody's business but my own: Self-employment and small enterprise in economic development

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gollin, Douglas
• 署名单位: Williams College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2007.11.003
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 219-233
• 关键词: self-employment; small enterprise; Firm size distribution

摘要

In most poor countries, small firms and self-employment are the dominant forms of business enterprise-even in the manufacturing sector. For rich countries, in contrast, self-employed people account for very small shares of manufacturing employment and output. This paper builds on Lucas [1978. On the size distribution of business firms. Bell Journal of Economics 9(2), 508-523] to ask whether structural changes of this kind are driven by productivity differences. A model, calibrated to Japanese time-series data, is shown to mimic key features of cross-country and time-series data. The results support the idea that changes in aggregate productivity account for much of the cross-country variation in establishment size and self-employment rates. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.