Purpose This paper aims to study the impact of micro-level socio-economic, demographic and geographical factors on the likelihood of self-employment entry of young adults in Palestine and filling a gap in the analysis of determinants of self-employment for young adults in Palestine. Design/methodology/approach The research design is based on a multinomial logistic (MNL) model and on the testing of seven hypotheses deriving from the review of the theoretical and empirical literature, using a micro-level longitudinal data set from the Palestinian Labour Force Surveys (PLFS) between 2009 and 2016. In the analysis, the dependent variable (employment status) is a discrete variable that takes four unordered and independent outcomes: wage employee, self-employed, employer and unpaid family member. Findings This study has strong evidence that the likelihood of self-employment increases with age. However, results are inconsistent with the well-known curvilinear relationship between age and self-employment. Regarding the role of gender, results show that young men are more likely to become self-employed than young women. Results indicate that there is a significant and negative impact of an increasing level of education on self-employment entry for both youth and the whole population. On the opposite, training after graduation increases the likelihood of self-employment entry for youth with high education level. Besides, this paper finds that young workers living in urban areas have more likelihood to enter self-employment than those in rural areas and young workers in Gaza have more likelihood to enter self-employment than their counterparts in West Bank. Practical implications First, in both West Bank and Gaza, young women are less inclined to actively engage in self-employment, which confirms structural inequalities between men and women. Therefore, this study calls for social protection programmes and for national programmes that would promote and develop women’s self-employment. Second, because this paper finds that youth self-employment is more an opportunity-driven phenomenon than a necessity-driven one, this study calls for programmes that provide youth with small business grants and training on entrepreneurship and business models. Originality/value Insights are valuable as both government institutions and universities and entrepreneurial startups can benefit from knowing which factors contribute to the self-employment likelihood of youth in Palestine and use the policy recommendations to develop capacity-building programmes to provide the youth and women with skills and competencies which enable them to turn to self-employment.

This study applies threshold regression model in a bivariate framework to explore the nonlinear long-term relationship among Bitcoin and gold prices over the period 2010-2018. Results are threefold: first, we show that gold is a significant predictor of Bitcoin prices. Second, we find evidence of a non-linear relationship between Bitcoin and gold prices characterized rather by a two-regime relationship with a structural break occurring in October 2017. Third, before the break, there is significant, negative but weak causality indicating that Bitcoin is a speculative asset. After the break, the relationship becomes significantly positive revealing diversifier and hedge properties of Bitcoin.

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We study the theoretical nexus between inflation and trade openness in the presence of a non-linear Phillips curve. Phillips curve explains the inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation; however, the open economy macroeconomic models usually propose that the slope of the trade-off should be related to the extent of trade openness. The role of openness as a check on inflation has recently attracted attention of many [1]. The parallelism between the recent globalization wave and the fall in inflation has led to a perception that the determinants of the slowdown in inflation were not only the domestic ones but could partly be due to increased trade openness. This study describes this relationship considering a non-linear Phillips curve. Using the conventional Phillips curve approximated by Cobb-Douglas model we confirm the earlier observations regarding the existence of a significant impact of openness on inflation. The interesting contribution of this study is not only to establish the trade-openness and inflation nexus but also to identify the relevant channels through which openness impacts inflation. Our model predicts that in the current scenario of increased openness a non-linear symmetric loss function may still prevail, but for the policy purposes it necessitates to consider domestic and foreign propensities to import and the exchange rate sensitivity to inflation. In addition, the integration of the international markets would result into an even more important role of exchange rate dynamics as a response to the rising international trade. We find that in the presence of a convex Phillips curve any upward variation in the foreigners' propensity to import would place a downward pressure on domestic inflation, provided that the current and the lagged rate of unemployment are less than minimum unemployment rate. Our model, while assessing the short run dynamics, also suggests that increased openness results into a complex divide among different economies, due to their sizes and structures. Investigating such a relationship as an extension of this study for different economic groups could reveal further interesting facts.

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