Wage employment, unemployment and self-employment across countries
研究发现贫困国家工资就业低、自雇就业高，且失业相对工资就业的比例也高；通过构建搜索匹配模型并校准37国数据，揭示劳动力市场摩擦对自雇就业和失业的影响同样显著，并降低总产出。
Poor countries have low wage employment and high self-employment. This paper shows that they also have high unemployment relative to wage employment, and that self-employment increases with this ratio. To understand the sources of these patterns, I build a search and matching model with choice between job search and self-employment and with learning about matches, and calibrate it to match all transition rates between wage employment, unemployment and self-employment as well as separation hazards by job duration, separately for all 37 countries with available data. Quantitative analysis of the model shows that labor market frictions affect self-employment as much as unemployment. Labor market frictions also reduce aggregate output, not only by raising unemployment, but also by worsening the average quality of both wage employment matches and active self-employment projects.