Germany experienced a unique rise in the level of self-employment in the first two decades following unification … employees and the overall level of self-employment in West Germany, their explanatory power is much lower for the stronger … increase of solo self-employment and of self-employment in former socialist East Germany. …

entrepreneurship in Germany between 1991 and 2010, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socioeconomic … increase in self-employment in Germany by 40 percent which can partly be attributed to the transformation process of East … Germany and to the shift to the service sector. We notice a yearly start-up rate of 1 percent among the working population …

Based on representative micro data for Germany, we compare the incomes of self-employed with those of wage workers. Our …