The sources of regional variation in Canadian self-employment

Abstract

The regional variation of entrepreneurship and self-employment within and across nations has been carefully studied over the past 20 years. A multitude of papers covering more than a dozen countries have examined what economic and social factors drive local entrepreneurship. This paper both adds to this literature by examining the sources of regional variation of self-employment in Canada as well as critiques it by discussing the challenge of applying findings from one country to others. Through a meta-analysis of 34 previous studies of regional entrepreneurial variation, several common factors are identified and then examined in a Canadian context. Using data from the 2006 Census of Canada, the paper uses OLS regression to test the role of economic, demographic, and social factors on non-agricultural self-employment in Canadian census metropolitan areas. Population growth, migration, unemployment, firm size and structure all play a significant role in rates of self-employment in Canada