Promoting self‐employment: Does it create more employment and business activity?

We assess the economic impact of reforms promoting self-employment in three countries that have implemented such since early 2000s: Netherlands, United Kingdom and France. To end, we use an unbalanced cross country-industry dataset 4,226 observations, including 12 OECD 20 market industries, over 1995-2016 period. first observe, using country-level data, share self-employed workers total employment is quite stable or declines period all our dataset, except where large been implemented, only after these reforms. econometrically confirm this on set industries find that, at end period, may increased by 5.5pp average 2.5pp 2pp Then, investigate value added a difference-in-differences approach. In spite broad sensitivity analysis, no evidence impacted either value-added.These results suggest raised number workers, but mostly through substitution effect between employees, not supply with informal activities. This means failed to achieve their main objectives.