Risk attitudes have an impact on not only the decision to become an entrepreneur but also the survival and failure rates of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become an entrepreneur,...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become an increasingly important part of active labor market policies (ALMP) in many OECD countries. Germany is a good example where the spending on start-up subsidies for the unemployed accounted for nearly 17% of the total spending on ALMP in 2004....

Support schemes for unemployed persons aiming to become self-employed have been recently reformed several times. In 2003, the start-up-subsidy (Existenzgründungszuschuss) was added to the existing bridging-allowance (Überbrückungsgeld) and the two programs to-gether led to a strong increase...

Standard job search theory assumes that unemployed individuals have perfect information about the effect of their search effort on the job offer arrival rate. In this paper, we present an alternative model which assumes instead that each individual has a subjective belief about the impact of his...

This paper empirically analyzes whether the character-based approach, which is based on the personality structure and the human capital of business founders, allows prediction of entrepreneurial success. A unique data set is used consisting of 414 previously unemployed persons whose personal...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between social networks and the job search behavior of unemployed individuals. It is believed that networks convey useful information in the job search process such that individuals with larger networks should experience a higher productivity of informal...

This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which...

This paper extends previous research about the determinants of reservation wages by analysing the effect of progressive income taxation on the ratio between reservation and net market wages. Based on micro data for Germany (SOEP) we show that joint income taxation in Germany which discriminates...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become a major focus of German active labour market policy (ALMP) in recent years. If effective, this would not only reduce Germany?s persistently high unemployment rate, but also increase its notoriously low self-employment rate. Empirical evidence...