| dc.description.abstract | Along with the economic transformation and development, street vendors in Taiwan transform as well. This industry is close to our daily life and contributes to the national economy to a certain degree. Due to the limitation of available micro-level data, studies examining the determinants of Taiwanese vendors are absent, to our best knowledge. Using a unique survey data conducted by Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan between 2007 and 2008, this study aims to analyze factors that influence street vendors’ profits, especially the role of human capital.
This empirical results show that vendor size, operating days, and male owner are positive associated with vendor profit at the 1% statistical level. Besides, human capital in terms of owners’ education level and experience is one of the key factors of profits. Experienced street vendors and owners with junior high school certificate or above do make higher profits. However, profits may not increase with higher educational level. Therefore, basic schooling is essential and contributes to profit, while higher educated degree does not guarantee to have a higher profit in the vendor industry. Owners’ ages of food vendors are negatively correlated to vendor profit. That represents the older the owner is, the less profits the owner makes. Food street vendors are near the perfect competition, so they cannot make supernormal profits | en_US |