Ethnic Background and the Value of Self‐Employment Experience: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment*

We use a randomized field experiment in Sweden to investigate how self‐employment experience is valued in the labour market. Our results show that self‐employment experience negatively impacts the likelihood of receiving a positive response from employers. For male applicants, this holds regardless of ethnic background, and independently of whether we consider applicants with experience solely from self‐employment, or applicants with combined experience from wage employment and self‐employment. For female applicants, the results are less clear‐cut. Our findings provide input into the discussion about the impact of self‐employment on the chances for individuals with different ethnic background to obtain wage employment.