Since the beginning of the transformation of East Germany from a socialist planned economy to a market economy, there has been an ambitious political goal of fostering entrepreneurial activity in that part of the country. One of the most-hoped for results of this undertaking is the anticipated...

Strukturelle Ver�nderungen sind ein Kennzeichen der Marktwirtschaft, gesetzliche Regelungen spiegeln h�ufig nur die Notwendigkeiten zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt wider und werden obsolet bzw. sind �nderungsbed�rftig. Der vorliegende Artikel gibt zun�chst einen kurzen...

Theoretical analyses of the effects of works councils show ambiguous results. Therefore an empirical investigation of the issue is inevitable. The results so far are mixed, frequently a positive effect on productivity, but a negative one on profits is found. The problem of both theoretical and...

In this paper we empirically discuss the question whether or not debt relief in the past fifteen years has been economically rational. Analysing the determinants of debt relief our results suggest that governance quality did not play a role in the decision of creditor countries to forgive debt...

Piracy in international waters is on the rise again, in particular off the coast of Somalia. While the dynamic game between pirates, ship-owners, insurance firms and the military seems to have reached some kind of equilibrium, piracy risks generating significant negative externalities to third...

This paper explores the relationship between knowledge creation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth in the United States over the last 150 years. According to the "new growth theory", investments in knowledge and human capital generate economic growth via spillovers of knowledge. But the...

We compare two "entrepreneurship" datasets: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) captures early-stage entrepreneurship and World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey (WBGES) captures business registration. GEM data is higher in developing economies than WBGES data, but this reverses in developed...

Policy interest since the early 1980s has focused in different ways on the creation of a large, productive, taxable economy - in which entrepreneurship plays a role for employment, income growth and innovation. The current understanding of various forms of entrepreneurship remains incomplete,...

The aim of this paper is to test how geographical and technological proximity relate to a particular industry's innovative output. Two mechanisms are therefore tested, i.e. agglomeration economies and the regional exploitation of technological proximity. A new dataset is applied, which includes...

We analyze the spatial diffusion of knowledge in laser technology in West Germany from 1960, when this technology began, until 2005. Laser technology research has been nearly exclusively conducted in regions that are home to a university with a physics or electrical engineering department, an...