ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ARTS RELATED EDUCATION

The aim of this paper is to shed light upon entrepreneurship among university graduates having different kinds of arts related education. Seven groups of arts-oriented education are considered and compared. The definition used of entrepreneurs relies upon individual time series data for all Swedish employees on wage employment, self-owning and co-owning but extends the view by also considering mixed forms of wage employment and owning.

After demonstrating the large differences between the seven groups concerning entrepreneurship rates, incomes and unemployment rates, a conceptual model for occupational choice is outlined. The choice is assumed to be governed by the related income and by the match between the skills required and the skills supplied, implying that an alternative providing a better match might be preferred to one providing a higher income.

Using multinomial probit model we estimate the likelihood of both becoming and being wage employee, owner or combiner. To determine the factors explaining the choice of occupation we relate the probability of being/becoming an owner, a wage employee or a combiner to the expected income and income variation as well as other explanatory variables such as correspondence of work with education, experience, unemployment rate, gender, background, age etc.

We find support for the hypothesis that correspondence of work with education is among the main factors explaining the selection into entrepreneurship and that artists are more interested in using their special skills rather than earning high income. We further find that education area does not effect the choice of occupation when entering the labor market, however there are systematic education area differences for those being in the labor market for more than one year with “Visual arts” being the most entrepreneurial and “Music” and “Dance, theater and drama” less entrepreneurial.