In this paper we examine causal effects of German public assistance programs for young firms administered by the Deutsche Ausgleichsbank (DtA). The empirical analysis is based on a combined data set with information from the ZEW Entrepreneurship Study and the DtA data base that contains all...

In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the...

Start-up subsidies play an important role in supporting start-up innovation and performance. However, what characteristics help and hinder start-ups to seek start-up subsidies remains unclear. We study whether and how founder personality, as captured by the big five personality traits and...

In recent times the service sector is often called the driving force of today's economies. This paper analyses the innovative activities of German service firms. We investigate whether firms that receive public subsidies for innovation projects engage more in innovative activities than others....

To increase employee participation in training activities, the German government introduced a large-scale training voucher program in 2008 that reduces training fees by half. Based on a randomized field experiment, this paper analyzes whether providing information about the existence and the...