We assess the relevance of formal education for the productivity of the self-employed and distinguish between opportunity entrepreneurs, who voluntarily pursue a business opportunity, and necessity entrepreneurs, who lack alternative employment options. We expect differences in the returns to...

Solo self-employment is on the rise despite less favorable working conditions compared to traditional jobs. We show that the introduction of minimum wages in German industries led to an increase in the share of solo self-employment by up to 8.5 percentage points. We explain our findings within a...

Banks in bad financial shape are more likely to appoint executive directors from the outside than those in good shape. It is, however, not clear whether all of these appointments necessarily lead to the desired turnaround. We analyze the performance effects of new board members with external...

The creation and effects of social capital have seldom been a target for systematic analysis in orthodox economics. The purpose of the paper is to argue that in order to include social capital, along with physical and human, into economic analysis, we have to regard human preferences as...

We conduct a field experiment with sellers of home-improvement services on two German online markets. We take the role of consumers and vary whether we request an invoice for the delivery of the service. In a market which allows anyone to sell anonymously, a willingness to evade is prevalent. In...

This paper explores the impact of antiquity on capitalism through the finance-growth nexus. We define antiquity as the length of established statehood (i.e., state history) and agricultural years. We argue that extractive institutions and deeply entrenched interest groups may prevail in...

This paper presents new evidence on how demography affects democratic attitudes in Western democracies. Using individual survey responses, the empirical analysis disentangles age from cohort patterns and other contemporaneous economic and political influences that shape democratic attitudes. The...

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the selfemployed, who...

German panel data is used to show that the decrease in life satisfaction caused by an increase in the probability of losing work is higher when self-employed than when paid employed. Further estimations reveal that becoming unemployed reduces self-employed workers ́satisfaction considerably...

Although a meaningful percentage of firms are created out of unemployment and current active labor market policies in Europe often subsidize unemployed individuals to start their own businesses, little is known about the role of unemployment insurance (UI) generosity for selfemployment. By using...