While an increasing number of conceptual studies postulate that vocational education and training (VET) activities have a positive impact on firm-level innovation, empirical evidence on the subject remains scarce. This study exploits establishment data from a representative survey of German...

Rostam-Afschar (2014) analyzes the impact of the deregulation of the German Trade and Crafts Code of 2004 on entrepreneurial activity, using German microcensus (MC) data. He finds a positive effect on market entry and self-employment and no change in exit probabilities. As these results...

Previous studies have found that generalized trust positively affects innovation at the country and regional level. We extend this literature by arguing that there are four reasons to believe that the trust-innovation relationship is heterogeneous across geographic space. First, there is a...