자영업의 증가는 경제성장과 실업률에 영향을 미치는가?

This study aims to clarify the relationship amongst self-employment, unemployment, and economic growth in Korea. Unlike foreign countries, most domestic studies have mainly estimated the effect of unemployment on self-employment, and therefore little is known about the effect of self-employment on unemployment. In this study, the dynamics amongst self-employment, unemployment, and economic growth in Korea are estimated by categorizing before and after the foreign exchange crisis (1997) using 3-variable and 4-variable VAR models. As a result of the analysis, it was found that self-employment increased when unemployment increased in Korea, and unemployment decreased again when self-employment increased. These results are consistent with the results of overseas studies such as Thurik et al. (2008) and Parker et al. (2012). In addition, before the global financial crisis, purely self-employed individuals did not have an effect on reducing unemployment, but after the global financial crisis, the increase of these individuals was found to play a positive role in reducing unemployment. Therefore, it is judged that the policy of artificially restraining self-employment because of the excessive proportion of self-employed in Korea is not desirable.