Results

CEP discussion paper

Tax simplicity or simplicity of evasion? Evidence from self-employment taxes in France

We use individual panel data and the introduction of simpler tax regimes for the self-employed in France to assess the extent to which individuals' shift towards the simpler tax regimes is driven by tax simplicity and by...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Supporting the UK's self-employed

Two years after the Covid-19 crisis began, incomes of the UK’s self-employed remain well below their pre-pandemic levels. Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura explain why the solo self-employed, who represent about 85% of ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed - A two year update

The fifth LSE-CEP survey of the self-employed of May 2022 provides an up to date picture of how Covid-19 and its aftermath keep affecting the self-employed. The findings show that, although working on average a little mo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

What lottery wins reveal about the gender gap

The UK has seen a rapid increase in self-employed workers over the last two decades, but only one-third are women. Sarah Flèche and colleagues analyse data on lottery winners to show that improving women's access to capi...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Earning less than before Covid-19, the self-employed struggle to make ends meet

Amid the renewed drives for economic growth, self-employed workers still struggle to recover fully from the COVID-19 crisis. Robert Blackburn and Maria Ventura write that In September 2021, 28% of workers reported financ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

Some of the self-employed are still struggling amid uncertainty about whether they could claim grants

The self-employed have not recovered from the pandemic despite five rounds of government support, find Robert Blackburn (University of Liverpool), Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura (LSE). More than a quarter are in financ...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed - 18 months into the crisis

A year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic, growth and economic recovery are the latest watchwords amongst labour market commentators in the UK. In this report we continue to monitor the situation of the self-employed ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization:

The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: A longitudinal study of lottery wins

Would improving women's access to capital reduce the gender entrepreneurial gap? We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing between large to small winners, we find that an increase ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Covid-19 and self-employment

The pandemic has had particularly damaging economic effects on self-employed people in the UK. CEP has now run three surveys to capture the experience of these workers during the crisis. Stephen Machin and Maria Ventura ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The importance of capital in closing the entrepreneurial gender gap: a longitudinal study of lottery wins

Can capital constraints explain why there are more male than female entrepreneurs in most societies? We study this issue by exploiting longitudinal data on lottery winners. Comparing between large to small winners, we fi...Read more...

Journal article

Business History:

Changes in Victorian entrepreneurship in England and Wales 1851-1911: Methodology and business population estimates

The full population of England and Wales employers and own-account business proprietors is estimated using population censuses 1851–1911. The main contribution of the article is a method of mixed single imputation to ove...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

Covid-19 and self-employment ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the crisis, the latest lockdown has hit the self-employed hard in the UK. In January 2021, 57% of surveyed self-employed workers were earning less than £1,000 per month, up from 31% in January 2020 an...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed - ten months into the crisis

Almost a year into the Covid-19 crisis, it has become widely acknowledged that UK self-employment has been particularly hard hit. Here we continue our series investigating the experience of self-employed workers througho...Read more...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

Covid-19 and the self-employed: six months into the crisis

Six months after Covid-19 first hit, it is clear that it is the greatest economic crisis of the modern age. The economy has contracted far more rapidly than in previous crises, with GDP dropping by a record 19.5 per cent...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Solo self-employment and alternative work arrangements: a cross-country perspective on the changing composition of jobs

The nature of self-employment is changing in most OECD countries. Solo self-employment is increasing relative to self-employment with dependent employees, often being associated with the development of gig economy work a...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Covid-19 and the future of self-employment

Jack Blundell reports how self-employed workers have been particularly hard hit by the crisis....Read more...

CentrePiece article

The UK's self-employed workers: who they are and what they need

One in seven people in the UK workforce is now in self-employment – but this is a very diverse community. Jack Blundell is developing a typology of self-employed workers, which can then be used to assess differences in h...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Clusters in UK self-employment

UK Self-employment has soared in recent years. With existing labour market policy designed to cater for conventional employee relationships, policymakers in this field are increasingly seeking to better understand these ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The gig economy and workers' preferences for steady jobs

Is the rise of gig work, freelancing, zero hours contracts and self-employment a result of people wanting such work or because they have no other choice? Nikhil Datta finds that while workers in the gig economy may like ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences

This paper investigates the extent to which labour supply preferences are responsible for the marked rise in atypical work arrangements in the UK and US. By employing vignettes in a discrete job choice experiment in a re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning

We study the effects of fiscal incentives for self-employment using new French tax data from 1994 to 2012. France serves as a good quasi-laboratory: It has three fiscal regimes - or modes of taxation - for the self-emplo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... 'Smart and illicit': the making of a successful entrepreneur

Smart teenagers who engage in illicit activities are much more likely to become entrepreneurs, according to research by Ross Levine and Yona Rubinstein. But, they note, being self-employed doesn’t necessarily make someon...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Smart and illicit: who becomes an entrepreneur and does it pay?

We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between “entrepreneurs” and other business owners. The incorporated self-employed have a distinct combination of cognitive, noncogniti...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Self-Employment Measure Entrepreneurship? Evidence from Great Britain

Research on entrepreneurship often uses information on self-employment to proxy for business creation and innovative behaviour. However, little evidence has been collected on the link between these measures. In this pape...Read more...