TY - JOUR AU - Blanchflower,David G. AU - Meyer,Bruce D. TI - A Longitudinal Analysis of Young Entrepreneurs in Australia and the United States JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 3746 PY - 1991 Y2 - June 1991 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3746 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3746.pdf N1 - Author contact info: David G. Blanchflower Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics 6106 Rockefeller Hall Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755-3514 Tel: 603/646-2536 Fax: 603/646-2122 E-Mail: David.G.Blanchflower@Dartmouth.EDU Bruce D. Meyer Harris School of Public Policy University of Chicago 1155 E. 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Tel: 773/702-2712 Fax: 773/702-0926 E-Mail: bdmeyer@uchicago.edu AB - This paper examines the pattern of self-employment in Australia and the United States. We particularly focus on the movement of young people in and out of self-employment using comparable longitudinal data from the two countries. We find that the forces that influence whether a person becomes self-employed are broadly similar: in both countries skilled manual workers, males and older workers were particularly likely to move to self-employment. We also find that previous firm size, previous union status and previous earnings are important determinants of transitions to self-employment. The main difference we observe is that additional years of schooling had a positive impact on the probability of being self-employed in the US but were not a significant influence in Australia. However, the factors influencing the probability of leaving self-employment are different across the two countries. The only similarity is that in both countries younger individuals are more likely to leave. ER -