We apply a multi-level approach to analyze the effect of three groups of determinants on new firm formation simultaneously: industry, location and changes over time. The data are for West Germany and cover the 1983-97 period. Our analysis indicates, that innovation activities and the...

In this paper, we assess educational factors which might have an impact on entrepreneurship. We analyze influences on the entrepreneurial intentions of German university students and find that pre-university education significantly affects their desire to become an entrepreneur. Using the recent...

The United States have them, European countries long for them, and universities are supposed to provide them—entrepreneurs are ubiquitously wanted because of their supposed impact on innovation and economic growth. The underlying mechanism is developed in Schumpeter’s (1912)...

This paper analyses the effect of industry, regional and firm level characteristics on the post entry performance of newly founded businesses by means of an econometric survival time model. First preference is given to an accelerated failure time model assuming a log-logistic distribution. The...

The paper deals with a new approach in German innovation policy that organizes contests of initiatives for public funds. Based on an overview of the different programs we investigate the advantages and problems of such an approach. We find that this type of policy may have a large impact and...

There is a broad consent that the extent, quality as well as the success of innovation activity is critically dependent on the generation and the application of knowledge. It is also widely recognized that innovation processes have a pronounced regional dimension and that the conditions for...

This paper investigates the impact of new firms’ quality on the magnitude of their employment effects. Our results clearly show that the quality of start-ups, measured by their affiliation to sectors and innovative industries, strongly influences the direct and the overall employment...

Studies for established market economies such as West Germany (Fritsch and Mueller, 2007), and Sweden (Andersson and Koster, 2011) have shown that regional start-up rates tend to show a relatively high level of persistence and path dependency over periods of 10-15 years. One main reason for this...

Several empirical studies showed that it is not the level of entrepreneurial activity itself, but the (long-term) survival and growth of new firms that determine the direct and indirect contribution of new businesses to regional employment. To this end, the aim of this paper is to analyze the...

We investigate the personal- and regional-level determinants of entrepreneurial activities in East Germany and Russia in the process of transition to a market-type economy. In this comparison entrepreneurship in West Germany is used as a benchmark. Whereas East Germany has experienced?after 40...