Transition to self-employment: historical continuities and discontinuities

Róbert, Péter (2000) Transition to self-employment: historical continuities and discontinuities. Hungarian Statistical Review, 78 (SN4). pp. 105-127. ISSN 0039-0690

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Abstract

The paper investigates entry into self-employment in a dynamic historical perspective, focusing on the changing influence of social origin, educational credentials and Communist Party membership. Interrupted bourgeoisie theory, concept of investment into human and cultural capital as well as social capital investment theory provide the framework for the empirical analysis. The analysis is carried out on a person period file where social origin is a time-constant measure, education and party membership are time-dependent measures. The model is estimated for different historical periods and findings are interpreted as historical effects on the changing conditions of social determination for becoming entrepreneurs in Hungary. Historical continuities and discontinuities are investigated by the spline regression method. Results reveal a U-curve for the impact of social origin on becoming self-employed, while returns to educational investments seem a reversed U-curve which is more marked for human capital investments than for cultural capital investments. Accumulated political capital plays larger role in predicting entry into self-employment than simple party membership. But conversion of political capital into economic one is not a post-communist phenomenon, it started much earlier already under the communist era.

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