@techreport{353ffb98b05249b6b6722c62ab10b775,
title = "Declining Search Frictions and Type-of-Employment Choice",
abstract = "Do more people choose to become self-employed when search frictions decline? The origin story of the gig economy suggests that improvements in communication technologies increase the self-employment rate, while cross-country evidence suggests the opposite. We reconcile conventional wisdom with the data by introducing frictions in labour and goods markets in a new model of self-employment. Declining labour market frictions decrease self-employment, while declining goods market frictions increase self-employment. We study the impact of the most salient recent reduction in frictions - the roll-out of broadband Internet - in a panel of OECD countries. We find that the effect of declining goods market frictions dominates: the arrival of broadband Internet has halted three quarters of the average downward trend in self-employment rates.",
keywords = "Self-employment, goods markets, labour markets, search frictions, internet, matching, efficiency",
author = "Piotr Denderski and Florian Sniekers",
note = "CentER Discussion Paper Nr. 2021-010",
year = "2021",
month = mar,
day = "31",
language = "English",
volume = "2021-010",
series = "CentER Discussion Paper",
publisher = "CentER, Center for Economic Research",
type = "WorkingPaper",
institution = "CentER, Center for Economic Research",
}