Talent workers as entrepreneurs: a new approach to aspirational self-employment

What is necessary to make entrepreneurship sector successful? It seems like two key factors in this matter are quantity of financial capital and quality of human capital. So far, studies on innovative firms were rather focused on spending on resources, and not on qualification of people who are entering entrepreneurship sector. Using concept of so-called talent workers (Hsieh et al. 2013) we check who is entering self-employment in Poland. Our question is whether people who enter self-employment are more likely to create successful businesses. The analysis is based on the labor force survey panel data for Poland for over a decade between 2001 and 2013. We found that talent workers were more likely to become self-employed in this period. Results are robust on two possibly confounding effects – within sector mobility and productivity of workers before entering self-employment.