"This paper investigates how founders' experience and professional background affect the duration of periods of self-employment, and to what extent the duration is affected by a balanced skill set in particular. In this context, an occupational choice framework based on a competing risk setting...

"This paper explores how different levels of regional concentration and specialisation affect the long-term growth of young firms. The sample consists of knowledge-intensive and non-knowledge-intensive western German manufacturing firms which were set-up in 1992 and managed to survive 11 years....

"This paper investigates how founders' experience and professional background affect the duration of periods of self-employment, and to what extent the duration is affected by a balanced skill set in particular. In this context, an occupational choice framework based on a competing risk setting...

"This paper explores how different levels of regional concentration and specialisation affect the long-term growth of young firms. The sample consists of knowledge-intensive and non-knowledge-intensive western German manufacturing firms which were set-up in 1992 and managed to survive 11 years....

"This paper addresses the 'Jack-of-all-Trades' hypothesis, which presumes that it is individuals' variety of competencies/experience that drives entrepreneurship instead of their level of productivity (Lazear, 2005). The analysis focuses on two related dimensions of this variety argument: taste...

"We study the returns on education in Europe in a comparative perspective. We extend the model of de la Fuente [(2003). Human Capital in a Global and Knowledgebased Economy. part II: Assessment at the EU Country Level. Report for the European Commission], by estimating the values of the relevant...

"Labour markets in most highly developed countries are marked by rising levels of skill segregation in the production process and increasing inequalities in skill-specific employment prospects. Local human capital has a likely effect on skill specific productivity levels and employment growth....

"We consider Roy's economies with perfectly competitive labor markets and asymmetric information. Firms choose their investments in physical capital before observing the characteristics of the labor markets they will face. We provide conditions under which equilibrium allocations are constrained...

"We consider an economy where production may use labor of two different skill levels. Workers are heterogeneous and, by investing in education, self-select into one of the two skills. Ex-ante, when firms choose their investments in physical capital, they do not know the level of human capital...

"The vocational qualification in Germany is crucial for a successful participation in the labour market. Persons without a vocational certification carry a clearly higher risk to become jobless and they have problems to gain a sustained foothold in the labour market. In contrast, at the upper...