Self-employment and independent workers

Abstract

Self-employment has long been thought of as the most basic form of entrepreneurial activity and thus an important source of innovation and economic growth (Parker,2009). It is, for example, widely believed that fostering new start-up businesses will help promote future employment growth given at least some of these new start-ups will survive and grow. Governments in many countries thus provide subsidies to individuals to help them set-up and remain in business, which they justify in part on job creation grounds. In Australia, the most prominent example of such an approach is the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, which commenced in 1985 and provides accredited training, business mentoring and ..