The vast majority of firms in developing economies are micro and small enterprises owned by families whose members also provide the labour to the units. Often, they fail to grow in size even with the relaxation of credit constraints. In this paper, we show that frictions in the labour market...

Analyzing a list of all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans in 1991 to 2009 linked with annual information on all U.S. employers from 1976 to 2012, we apply detailed matching and regression methods to estimate the variation in SBA loan effects on job creation and firm survival across firm...

We analyze linked databases on all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, on all SBA lenders, and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Our methods combine regressions with matching on firm age, size, industry, year, and employment history,...

Increasing wage inequality between similar workers plays an important role for overall inequality trends in industrialized societies. To analyze this pattern, we incorporate directed labor market search into a dynamic model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and homogeneous workers....

Seit der zweiten Hälfte der neunziger Jahre setzt sich mehr und mehr die These durch, dass mit den neuen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien ein neues „goldenes" Zeitalter mit höheren Produktivitäts- und Wachstumsraten angebrochen sei. Worauf beruht der so genannte Neue...

Der scharfe konjunkturelle Einbruch in den USA seit Beginn des vergangenen Jahres hat in der breiten Öffentlichkeit zur Frage geführt, ob sich die zuvor viel gepriesene New Economy als Illusion erweisen könnte. Doch von den Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) gehen auch...

This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans – in particular instalment loans and overdrafts – to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal...

Based on a large employer-employee matched data set, the paper investigates the effects of variable enforcement of German dismissal protection legislation on the employment dynamics in small establishments. Specifically, using a difference-in-differences approach, we study the effect of changes...

According to the German disability law, or Schwerbehindertengesetz, either six percent of all jobs in an establishment must be occupied by disabled employees or the firm has to pay a penalty of DM 200 per month for every job under consideration. This note reports results from the first...