@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp16122,
            	author={Cockx, Bart and Desiere, Sam},
            	title={Labour Costs and the Decision to Hire the First Employee},
            	year={2023},
	month={May},
            	institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)},
            	address={Bonn},
            	type={IZA Discussion Paper},
            	number={16122},
            	url={https://www.iza.org/publications/dp16122},
	abstract={Firms without paid employees account for up to 80% of all firms, but only a small minority ever hires. This paper investigates the relationship between labour costs and the decision to hire a first employee and become an employer. Leveraging a unique policy in Belgium that permanently reduced the labour cost of the first employee by 13%, we find that the number of new, first-time employers jumped by 31% immediately following the reform. The elasticity of the probability to hire the first employee with respect to the labour cost is −2.39 [95% CI: −3.45, −1.25].},
	keywords={payroll taxes;hiring decisions;nonemployers;small businesses},
            }