This paper examines the conditions for business success in rural Sweden, with a particular focus on differences between business owners who have grown up in rural areas (“stayers”) and those who have migrated there as adults (“in-movers”). We draw on a unique, large-scale survey, linked to administrative register data, covering business owners aged 25–55 with firms of up to ten employees. This combined dataset provides detailed insights into both perceptions of business conditions and objective background characteristics.Our analysis shows that business owners in rural municipalities place greater weight on both enabling and constraining factors than their counterparts in non-rural areas, reflecting the thinner institutional environment of rural regions. Within rural areas, stayers emphasize locally embedded factors, e.g., municipal responsiveness and access to local services, whereas in-movers highlight the importance of communications and transport infrastructure and are more often oriented toward external markets. Regression analyses reveal that these differences are largely attributable to compositional factors: in-movers are more educated, more often female, and more likely to operate in skill-intensive service sectors, while stayers are concentrated in agriculture and other location-dependent industries. Robustness checks confirm that our conclusions remain stable across alternative specifications.These findings highlight the complementary roles of stayers and in-movers in rural entrepreneurial ecosystems. Policy interventions should therefore be multifaceted, strengthening local institutions and services while also investing in transport and digital infrastructure to support diverse forms of rural entrepreneurship.

”Att flyglinjer läggs ner tillsammans med det faktum att tågens punktlighet försämrats över tid påverkar företagsklimatet runt om i Sverige”, skriver forskare vid Linnéuniversitetet.

We examine immigrant self-employment in Sweden during the turbulent decade 2011–2021. This is done for different cohorts of immigrants from Africa and Asia and for unincorporated and incorporated firms. Immigrants have lower business earnings and higher exit rates from self-employment than natives, which is in line with previous research. The period in which the immigrants arrived in Sweden and the type of business they are engaged in have important implications for outcomes. In most cases, outcomes are more favorable for those who came to Sweden up to the turn of the millennium, and less so for the latest arrivals. Even so, a closer look at outcomes by organizational form reveals that immigrants who arrived during 2011–2021 suffered less in terms of lower business earnings compared to earlier cohorts if they were in incorporated instead of unincorporated self-employment. Switching organizational form is not associated with catching up on business earnings for immigrant self-employed vis-à-vis Swedish-born.

This paper examines how managerial background influences firms’ use of labor migration. Using Swedish data, we analyze whether firms led by foreign-born managers are more likely to apply for work permits for non-EU workers. We find that such managers significantly increase the likelihood of application, even after controlling for firm characteristics and regional conditions. Our results suggest that leadership diversity affects access to global labor and how firms engage with migration policy. The study adds new evidence on how firm-level decision-makers shape international recruitment and the institutional channels of cross-border labor mobility.

This study evaluated discrimination against children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) in Swedish sports clubs through a field experiment. Two fictitious fathers sent emails to 193 top-division clubs in football, floorball, ice hockey, and handball, one disclosing his son's T1DM condition. The investigation focused on disparities in clubs' responses and the information provided. Results indicated no statistically significant difference in positive or comprehensive responses between emails mentioning T1DM and those that did not, though the observed differences in response rates suggest that limited statistical power may have obscured small but meaningful disparities. This highlights the need for cautious interpretation and further study.

We present results from research on different dimensions of immigrant self-employment in Sweden. There are variations in self-employment rates between different groups of immigrants and the native population. Self-employment rates have increased markedly among certain groups of immigrants since the 1990s.

Immigrants from certain countries in the Middle East are over-represented in self-employment, while self-employment rates among immigrants from countries in Africa are relatively low. Immigrants from countries outside Europe are often self-employed in branches with low entry barriers. Exit rates from self-employment are generally higher, and earnings are lower among self-employed non-European immigrants than among self-employed natives and European immigrants. 

Research regarding explanations for why immigrants opt for self-employment is presented. Results indicate that immigrants are pushed into self-employment due to low earnings in wage-employment. As regards the effects of ethnic enclaves, networks, and traditions from their home countries, the results are inconclusive. Family traditions and parental role models increase self-employment propensities more for immigrants than for natives.

Non-European immigrants report that they encounter other difficulties and obstacles in their business activities than natives and European immigrants. They consider lack of access to financial capital and discrimination from banks, customers, and suppliers as obstacles for successful self-employment. Finally, results show that immigrants who are successful in their business activities may play an important role for labor market integration since they create employment opportunities also for other immigrants.

När tågen inte går att lita på och fler orter drabbas av indragna flyglinjer upplever många företagare i landsbygdskommuner att det blir svårare att bedriva affärsverksamhet. Det menar Mats Hammarstedt och Per Skedinger, professor respektive adjungerad professor i nationalekonomi vid Linnéuniversitet i Växjö.