infonet-economy

"The self-employed are substantially more satisfied with their worknthan employed persons. We document this relationship for 23 countries andnshow that the higher job satisfaction can directly be attributed to thengreater autonomy that self-employed persons enjoy. ""Being your own boss""nseems to provide non-pecuniary benefits from work that point to thenexistence of procedural utility: autonomy is valued beyond outcomes as angood decision-making procedure. The results hold not only for WesternnEuropean, North American and former communist Eastern European countries,nbut largely also for countries with a non-western cultural background."