Gig economy and ethnic minorities self-employment

Abstract

In this dissertation titled ”Gig Economy and Ethnic Minorities Self-Employment, I, Lilie Timricht, investigate the impact of the development of gig work platforms on the creation of new self-employed activities in the ride-hailing sector, and on the participation of ethnic minorities, leveraging the rollout treatment of UberX platform in France. Results from an event study design approach reveal that the platform significantly raised the number of new self-employed drivers registrations, and increased the share of drivers with African ethnic background by around 10 percentage points. These results suggest that the gig economy created new pathways to self-employment, especially for ethnic minorities.

Date of Award	14 Oct 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Charles Gottlieb (Supervisor), Bruno Decreuse (Co-Supervisor) & Morgan Raux (Co-Supervisor)