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Selective Mobility into Self-employment in Post-socialist Transition

Early Birds, Later Entrants, Quitters and Shuttles

Tallinn University, Estonia, saar{at}iiss.ee

Marge Unt

Tallinn University, Estonia, marge{at}iiss.ee

On the one hand, a self-employed worker may be a successful business owner exploiting new opportunities.At the other extreme, self-employed may be refugees from poverty and unemployment with few resources and few opportunities to earn high incomes. In this article, we address the question about importance of the `pull' and `push' factors into self-employment drawing upon the experience of post-socialist Estonia.The article uses data from various sources (quantitative as well as qualitative).We conclude that the crucial mechanism at play may have been selective mobility into self-employment. At the beginning of the 1990s less educated workers who were working in primary and secondary sectors moved into self-employment more or less for lack of choice. Most more educated self-employed who started their business in the first half of the 1990s moved out from self-employment and became managers in firms belonging to the state or other employers.As reforms progressed, the type of people who were moving into self-employment changed.

Key Words: post-socialist countries • privatization • selective mobility • self-employment

International Small Business Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3, 323-349 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0266242608088741


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