André van Stel's research while affiliated with Trinity College Dublin and other places

Publications (62)

Article
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Plain English Summary Policy-makers: Decide what type of entrepreneurship you want for your country and, only then, choose your policies, because ‘one size doesn’t fit all.’ Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from informal street market traders on the one hand to formal tech giants in majestic offices on the other. The view of most...
Article
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In this case study, three technology-based companies from the Benelux area are introduced, with different sizes, ages, and backgrounds (Philips, SMS-Timing, and Trebu Technology). The companies have used different entry strategies into the Chinese market, ranging from exporting goods and services to setting up joint ventures with Chinese partner fi...
Article
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It is increasingly being recognized that different types of entrepreneurs exist with different performance levels and different contributions to the economy. Two common classifications of entrepreneurship types are based on professional status and start-up motive, where independent own-account workers are assumed to perform better than dependent se...
Chapter
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A gender earnings gap has been found among employees in the organizational workplace context. It is unknown if such gap also exists among entrepreneurs, who are playing a significant role in our economic activities. This study aims to fill this important gap by examining the gender earnings gap among entrepreneurs using data collected from over 500...
Chapter
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Using recent data drawn from the European Working Conditions Survey for 32 European countries, we explore the relationship between two indicators of knowledge diffusion processes —country-level R&D and individual-level ICT usage at work by entrepreneurs—, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and individual-level entrepreneurial performance as measur...
Article
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This paper explores the extent to which information and communication technology (ICT) is used by different types of self-employed individuals and how it affects their earnings. We investigate independent own-account workers (IOA), self-employed with employees (SEwE) and dependent self-employed workers (DSEW). Using recent survey data for 35 Europe...
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We investigate the impact of country R&D on the allocation of self-employment across different types, where types are identified based on occupational status and start-up motive. We first conduct a literature review based on which we consider the self-employed with employees to be of higher ‘quality’ (in terms of their overall contribution to the e...
Conference Paper
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We invite you to submit your research to explore the theme of Reshaping capitalism for a sustainable world for the EURAM 21 the Conference. We look forward to receiving your submissions.
Article
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This article investigate the relationship between financial distress, well-being and employment status. Using several indicators of financial distress and of well-being, our econometric analysis shows that the negative association between financial distress and well-being is moderated by employment status in the sense that financial problems are mo...
Article
We investigate hiring plans by solo self-employed workers at the time of business start-up using a survey of solo start-up entrepreneurs. We find a negative relationship between the tertiary education of the entrepreneurs and their future plans to hire employees, reflecting that motives other than income may be relevant for highly-educated solo sel...
Article
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Using macro-level data for 32 European countries, the present paper explores developments in the education distributions among solo self-employed workers and employer entrepreneurs in the non-agricultural economy over the period 1997–2014. Our dynamic analysis reveals that over this period, the number of solo self-employed workers, but particularly...
Article
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This paper investigates the relationship between start-up motivation (opportunity versus necessity) and entrepreneurial performance of an important subset of entrepreneurs, viz., the solo self-employed. We use a unique individual-level panel data set of solo self-employed in the Netherlands (2010–2011) and construct three separate measures derived...
Article
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We investigate the roles of inward FDI and education in explaining country levels of entrepreneurship. It is widely recognised that inward FDI may have positive but also negative spillover effects on entrepreneurial activity. We argue that both types of spillovers (positive and negative) may be reinforced by high education levels of the labour forc...
Article
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Entrepreneurial, innovative entry can have devastating effects disrupting a market. However, the many players involved including all current producers, sellers and suppliers and the often non-technological but organizational nature of the innovation may lead to a gradual restoration of the market, viz., to a new equilibrium. Entrepreneurial entry c...
Article
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Using recent data drawn from the European Working Conditions Survey for 32 European countries, we explore the relationship between country-level expenditures on R&D, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and individual-level entrepreneurial performance as measured by earnings. Our results show that both R&D expenditures and IPR are positively associa...
Article
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This paper examines the perceptions and actual experiences of SME owners and entrepreneurs in Serbia regarding the impact of corruption on the establishment of new businesses. It is based on primary research conducted in 2015 on a sample of 250 entrepreneurs and owners of small and medium-sized enterprises in Serbia. An original questionnaire was u...
Article
We examine the impact of labour productivity growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on labour productivity growth of large firms in a 19-year panel of 26 European countries. We apply a dynamic panel data model that allows for macro-level interdependencies in productivity between small and large firms. Our main finding concerns a sizabl...
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The advent of online peer-to-peer crowdfunding presents a new type and source of finance for small firms. This raises the question of whether this innovation makes any difference to the type of business that can secure funding and the amount that they pay for this finance. In this paper, we examine the American online peer-to-peer loan crowdfunding...
Article
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We investigate the impact of prior entrepreneurial experience on current performance of firms with employees (employer firms). We distinguish between external entrepreneurial experience obtained outside of the current firm and internal entrepreneurial experience obtained within the boundaries of the employer firm currently run. Regarding the latter...
Article
Countries vary widely and systematically in the extent to which the ambitions of their entrepreneurs differ from their realisations. We label this discrepancy entrepreneurial overconfidence (EOC). Although a certain level of EOC may be beneficial for an economy, we provide empirical support for the argument that if entrepreneurial ambitions substan...
Chapter
This chapter aims to contribute to a structured overview of relevant dimensions and possible typologies, and to a selection of a smaller number of major entrepreneurship types that make specific economic and social contributions. It examines the entrepreneurial roles that are being fulfilled by these main types. Apart from two general roles that ar...
Article
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to predict future career paths of university students, distinguishing between paid employment, running one’s own independent business and running a family business. The main predictor is the students’ current mode of entrepreneurial exposure, both in terms of the students running their own business, and in terms...
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This article examines the impact of national employment incentive programs on employment growth of individual firms in the original fifteen member states of the European Union (EU-15). We investigate whether this impact differs among firms of different size classes, and whether the effectiveness of employment incentive programs depends on the busin...
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One of the most prominent features of China’s transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-based economy is the emergence of entrepreneurship, although previous literature discusses this phenomenon descriptively rather than prescriptively. In this article, we consider entrepreneurship developments in China since the end of the 1970s and...
Article
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One of the most prominent features of China’s transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-based economy is the emergence of entrepreneurship, although previous literature discusses this phenomenon descriptively rather than prescriptively. In this article, we consider entrepreneurship developments in China since the end of the 1970s and...
Article
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This cross-country study adopts a competing theories approach in which both a value perspective and a social capital perspective are used to understand the relation between religion and a country’s business ownership rate. We distinguish among four dimensions of religion: belonging to a religious denomination, believing certain religious propositio...
Chapter
Following earlier work by Audretsch et al. (2002), we assume that an optimal size-class structure exists, in terms of achieving maximal economic growth rates. Such an optimal structure is likely to exist, as economies need a balance between the core competences of large firms (such as exploitation of economies of scale) and those of smaller firms (...
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We review the literature on solo self-employment focusing on prevalence, characteristics and economic contributions. Besides providing explanations for the upward trend in solo self-employment observed in many Western economies, we shed light on the heterogeneity within the population of solo self-employed with respect to demographic characteristic...
Article
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Given the increasing numbers of own-account workers in many European economies, an important question for policy makers is to what extent these own-account workers move on to become employers. Yet, empirical research on job creation by own-account workers hardly exists. This paper reviews a small stream of empirical literature which, by using the E...
Article
The Spanish seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 26.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012, almost three percentage points higher than one year earlier and almost 12 percentage points higher than at the end of 2008. Although the exponential growth of Spanish unemployment is mainly caused by a lower demand for labor, there is also a second...
Article
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Human capital obtained through education has been shown to be one of the strongest drivers of entrepreneurship performance. The entrepreneur’s human capital, though, is only one of the input factors into the production process of her venture. In this paper we will analyze to what extent the education levels of other (potential) stakeholders affect...
Article
We estimate an extended version of the three-equation model of Carree et al. (Small Bus Econ 19(3):271–290, 2002) where deviations from the ‘equilibrium’ rate of self-employment play a central role determining both the growth of self-employment and the rate of economic growth. In particular, we distinguish between solo self-employed and employer en...
Article
Some three to four decades ago, it was generally accepted in economic literature that the average size of firms would continue to increase with progressive economic development. This would be the result of an ever increasing importance of exploitation of scale economies. However, since that time, small-scale selfemployment rates have increased in m...
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We investigate developments in private sector activity as proxied by business ownership (BO) rates in four Central and East European (CEE) transition economies (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic) and compare them with similar developments in other OECD countries in the period 1989-2008. Our analysis reveals that BO rates i...
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This paper focuses on certain drivers of SME sales growth related to knowledge and innovation. Building on the dynamic capabilities literature, we test whether two organizational capabilities (external sourcing and employee involvement in renewal activities) predict sales growth, and if so, whether such effects are mediated by process and/or produc...
Article
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Policy in developed countries is often based on the assumption that higher business ownership rates induce economic value. Recent microeconomic empirical evidence casts doubts on the validity of this assumption or, at least, leads to a more nuanced view: Especially the top performing business owners are responsible for the value creation of busines...
Article
The Spanish unemployment rate stood at 14,4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, the highest rate in the 27-nation EU. This exponential growth of Spanish unemployment rate is not only the by-product of falling employment but also it is the participation rate that is increasing. For this reason forecasts are underestimating the unemployment rates....
Article
Blue ocean strategy seeks to turn strategic management on its head by replacing ‘competitive advantage’ with ‘value innovation’ as the primary goal where firms must create consumer demand and exploit untapped markets. Empirical analysis has been focused on case study evidence and so lacks generality to resolve the debate. We provide a methodologica...
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This paper examines the relationship between new firm formation and regional employment change in the Netherlands. Using a new regional data base for the period 1988-2002, we examine the time lags involved in the relationship. We also investigate whether the relationship differs by time period, by sector and by degree of urbanization. We find that...
Chapter
This volume provides a comprehensive review of the theoretical concepts and empirical models of entrepreneurship from a non-conventional perspective. Its main purpose is to contribute to the design of an efficient system of indicators of entrepreneurship and competitiveness. The existence of a gap between the theory of entrepreneurship and the meth...
Chapter
This chapter presents a harmonized data set over the period 1972-2004, containing two-yearly data on the number of non-agricultural business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of a country. The data set is called COMPENDIA and has...
Article
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Most studies investigating the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth treat entrepreneurs as a homogeneous group. This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurial diversity on national economic growth. Using data for 36 countries participating in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor we investigate whether the impact on growth...
Article
This paper presents a harmonized data set over the period 1972-2002, containing two-yearly data on the number of non-agricultural business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of a country. The data set is called COMPENDIA, which mea...
Article
Entrepreneurial activity is generally assumed to be an important aspect of the organization of industries most conducive to innovative activity and unrestrained competition. This paper investigates whether total entrepreneurial activity (TEA) influences GDP growth for a sample of 36 countries. We test whether this influence depends on the level of...
Article
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Using a novel country-industry level panel database with information on newly incorporated firms in 17 European countries between 1997 and 2004, we study how taxation of corporate income affects the size of entrants at the country-industry level. Our results, which are robust to changes in several assumptions, suggest that a one-unit reduction in t...
Article
Thesis (doctoral)--Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, 2005.
Article
Administrative burdens are known to be a major business constraint for incumbent SMEs in modern economies. Far less is known about the influence of these burdens on the startup of new firms. The current paper examines to what extent perceived administrative complexity related to starting a new business influences the number of business owners acros...
Article
The link between firm births and job creation: is there a Upas Tree effect?, Regional Studies 38, 893-909. This paper examines the relationship between firm births and job creation in Great Britain. It uses a new data set for 60 British regions, covering the whole of Great Britain, between 1980 and 1998. For Great Britain as a whole, no significant...
Article
Van Stel A. J. and Nieuwenhuijsen H. R. (2004) Knowledge spillovers and economic growth: an analysis using data of Dutch regions in the period 1987-1995, Reg. Studies 38, 393-407. The importance of knowledge spillovers for achieving innovation and economic growth is widely recognized. It is not straightforward which types of spillover are most effe...
Article
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This paper deals with differences in the rate of self-employment (business ownership) in 15 European countries for the period 1978-2000, focusing on the influence of dissatisfaction and using the framework of occupational choice. Using two different measures of dissatisfaction, in addition to the level of economic development, the unemployment rate...
Article
The data set COMPENDIA contains harmonized data on the number of business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries over the period 1972-2000, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of a country. Business ownership rates have been made comparable across countries and over time....
Article
The importance of knowledge spillovers for achieving innovation and economic growth is widely recognised. It is not straightforward which type of spillovers is most effective: intra-sectoral spillovers or inter-sectoral spillovers. We investigated this controversy using a model of regional growth. The model also deals with the impact of local compe...
Article
In the present paper we address the relationship between the extent of business ownership, or as we use interchangeably self-employent, and economic growth.
Article
After 1989, radical changes in the level of entrepreneurial activity have taken place in the Central and East European (CEE) region countries, transitioning from the communist to a market economy system. In this paper we explore these developments at the macro level of countries. In particular, we investigate developments in business ownership rate...

Citations

... In Ghana, similar to low-income countries, self-employment rates influence informal entrepreneurship (Dana, 2007;Laing et al., 2021). Self-employed individuals see themselves as entrepreneurs (Dana, 2007, p. 162). ...
... Other scholars (Bögenhold, 2019;van Stel and van der Zwan, 2019;Dvouletý, 2020;Van Stel et al., 2021) also confirm the heterogeneous nature of self-employed individuals regarding income level, occupation, education, dependency and security level. ...
... We control for a large set of factors that are known to influence working time quality and stress at work, namely educational attainment, job-related aspects (tenure, net monthly earnings) and some demographic indicators (gender, immigrant, age, health status) as well as information at the household level (family structure, household ability to make ends meet) (see e.g., Berg, Kalleberg and Appelbaum, 2003;Batt and Valcour, 2003;White, Hill, McGovern, Mills and Smeaton, 2003;Sturges and Guest, 2004;Dex and Bond, 2005;Russell, O'Connell and McGinnity, 2009;Abendroth and Dulk 2011;Stephan et al., 2020). We also control for ICT use at work, which may serve as an efficiency-enhancing driver of business agility and performance (Millán, Lyalkov, Burke, Millán and Van Stel, 2021;Barrientos-Marín, Fu, Millán and Van Stel, 2021) and can also increase the working time quality of individuals and business owners. With regard to gender, prior research has argued that women are more likely to be responsible for more childcare time (O'Brien, 2005), domestic labor (Tang and Cousins, 2005), housework (Tower and Alkadry, 2008), and emotional and physical support to partners, children, and parents (Strazdins and Broom, 2004). ...
... Interestingly, financial stress significantly and positively affects the financial well-being of the respondents. Generally, financial stress weakens financial well-being and negatively affects well-being (Berrill et al., 2021). ...
... There is convincing evidence that many freelancers also have regular jobs (Bögenhold, 2019a;Bögenhold and Klinglmair, 2017;Shevchuk and Strebkov, 2015) and increasingly use online platforms to obtain additional income (Huws et al., 2017). Another group of freelancers, often neglected in the literature on the gig economy, are in the process of starting their own business with hired employees (Shevchuk and Strebkov, 2017;van Stel et al., 2020). Moreover, freelance work may take on a different status in an individual's work biography and people may have various career intentions. ...
... The emerging digital transformation phenomenon has affected businesses, organizations and their supply chains (Mariani and Fosso Wamba, 2020). Previous studies have provided extensive pieces of evidence about the disruptive effects that new advanced technologies can trigger at the strategic level (Urbinati et al., 2019) and in business practices, processes, models and values (Appio et al., 2021;Guenzi and Habel, 2020;Klein et al., 2020;Ruzza et al., 2020;Secinaro et al., 2022a) as well as at a business performance level (Millán et al., 2021). ...
... Education has an impact on the number of workers as well. van Stel et al. [10] and Liu et al. [11] utilize education to explain women's employment and also demonstrate that educated women make more money, which boosts overall expenditure. Promoting women's rights and making it simpler for them to access resources and education can boost economic development. ...
... Relatedly, there is evidence of the importance of the institutional environment when doing business (Džunić and Golubović 2018;Dreher, Kotsogiannis and McCorriston 2009;Djankov et al. 2002). In a survey on the effects of corruption on the South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Volume 17 (2) 2022 establishment of new businesses in Serbia, the respondents were the owners of SMEs, and 60% of them admitted to engaging in corrupt behaviors when starting a business (Ivanović-Djukić et al. 2019). In a study of businesspeople's perspectives on corruption in the business sector, as well as on the governments' role in fighting corruption in the Western Balkans (Serbia included) the results showed that businesspeople from the whole region perceive corruption as a negative phenomenon that needs to be dealt with, firstly through government-led measures and actions, but also by the actions of individuals and private organizations (Budak and Rajh 2014). ...
... Many of the papers in this strand of literature focus on the dynamic evolutionary themes of Schumpeterian creative destruction (Fok et al., 2019;Carree et al., 2002;Vega-Redondo, 1996), or Darwinian selection (Van Ewijk, 1997;Arkolakis, 2016). Several papers base themselves on the theory of Nelson and Winter's (1982) Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Webber et al., 1992;Luo, 2009). ...
... If regular workers can rely on their employer, self-employed workers must usually rely on their skills (Menger, 2017). While the quality of self-employment in a country is often associated to the country's wealth or its investment in R&D (Burke et al., 2021), self-employed workers usually report higher levels of stress due to job instability (Bencsik and Chuluun, 2021). Below, we show that the range of functionings observed in the context of work can differ between regular and self-employed workers according to the institutional framework of reference. ...