The Place-Based Structural Determinants and Effects of Self-Employment, final report to the E.M. Kauffman Foundation, RDP 33, Stephan J. Goetz, September 2006. Abstract. This study expands on previous research by including a wider set of local economic and community factors affecting non-farm entrepreneurship or self-employment than have previously been considered. These factors affect both the rates of and returns to selfemployment in US counties. In the county-level regression analyses, individual-level socio-demographic variables capture the characteristics of the population pool from which the self-employed are drawn. These individual-level factors are distinguished from local county characteristics that affect self-employment or proprietorship formations. Some of the latter variables are subject to policy influence while others serve as controls that are not easily changed. While the literature on self-employment or proprietorship formations is sizeable, empirical research on the returns to self-employment is virtually non-existent. A major contribution of the present study is to reveal why the returns to self-employment vary over space. http://www.nercrd.psu.edu/Publications/rdppapers/rdp33.pdf