We use Swedish administrative data to study the role of unemployment risk in salaried employees’ decisions to become entrepreneurs. Using the 2001 relaxation of Sweden’s last-in-first-out (LIFO) dismissal rule as an exogenous shock to unemployment risk, we find that employees facing increased unemployment risk are more likely to become entrepreneurs. The effect is more pronounced for employees with longer tenure, as they were newly exposed to greater unemployment risk. When we track entrepreneurs’ income dynamics and the performance of their ventures, we find that entrepreneurs who used to face greater unemployment risk do not underperform compared to other entrepreneurs. Our results provide some of the first empirical evidence of how employees respond to increased unemployment risk.

中文翻译：

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从员工到企业家：失业风险的作用


我们使用瑞典的行政数据来研究失业风险在受薪员工成为企业家的决定中的作用。以 2001 年瑞典放宽后进先出 （LIFO） 解雇规则作为对失业风险的外生冲击，我们发现面临更高失业风险的员工更有可能成为企业家。这种影响对任期较长的员工更为明显，因为他们新近面临更大的失业风险。当我们跟踪企业家的收入动态和他们的企业表现时，我们发现，与其他企业家相比，过去面临更大失业风险的企业家并没有表现不佳。我们的结果为员工如何应对增加的失业风险提供了一些初步的实证证据。