{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.017745302713987474, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011482254697286013, 'mean_word_length': 5.10828025477707, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Does Self-Employment Reduce Unemployment? A Contribution from the Franchise System

Franchising, considered as a way of starting up a business, contributes to create employment. Because of that, the aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of some macroeconomic variables – economic growth and unemployment rate and other franchise specific variables – initial investment and up-front franchise fees in the decision of franchising a system outlet during the period 2000-2009. To reach this objective we chose a sample of 352 franchise systems that operate in the Spanish market using panel data methodology. The results concluded that initial investment and up-front franchise fees are signals received by franchisees as franchisors want them to be perceived. In addition, they support the decision by unemployed workers to franchise outlets in the period under study. Theory of Signals and Panel Data methodology are the relevant aspects in this paper.