We test a new model where the entrepreneurial decision is described as a process of successive engagement levels, i.e., as an entrepreneurial ladder. Five levels are distinguished using nearly 12,000 observations from the 2004 “Flash Eurobarometer survey on Entrepreneurship” covering the 25...

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurship (as measured by fluctuations in the business ownership rate) and unemployment in Japan for the period between 1972 and 2002. We find that, although Japan’s unemployment rate has been influenced by specific exogenous shocks, the...

Entrepreneurs exit their business due to selection mechanisms experienced in the market place. Next to this well known ex-post decision to exit, entrepreneurs select ex-ante whether they are willing to pursue an entrepreneurial career at all, or to give up these entrepreneurial intentions. This...

How valuable are cognitive and social abilities for entrepreneurs’ incomes as compared to employees? We answer three questions: (1) To what extent does a composite measure of ability affect an entrepreneur's earnings relative to employees? (2) Do different cognitive abilities (e.g. math...

This paper first documents the increase in the time lag with which labor input reacts to output fluctuations (the labor adjustment lag) that is visible in US data since the mid-1980s. We show that a lagged labor adjustment response is optimal in a setting where there is uncertainty about the...

We investigate which countries have the highest potential to achieve entrepreneurial progress. This progress is defined using an entrepreneurial ladder with five successive steps: “never thought about starting a business”, “thinking about starting a business”, “taking steps to start a...

This paper characterizes the equilibrium for a large class of search models with two-sided heterogeneity and on-the-job search. Besides the well-known congestion externalities, we show that on-the-job search in combination with monopsonistic wage setting without commitment creates a...

This paper analyzes the determinants of lay-offs, job-to-job movements and totalseparations with a unique data set that combines information on individual firmsand their workers. We are in particular interested in whether the lay-offpolicy of firms can explain the relatively high level of...

The continuing deterioration of the position of low skilled workers in the beginning of the 90's in essentially all industrialized countries is one of the most debated issues in both labor and macro-economics. In this paper a matching model with low and high skilled workers and simple and...

This paper describes a search model with a continuum of worker and job types, free entry and transferable utility. We apply a second-order Taylor expansion to characterize the equilibrium, derive the "cost of search" and show that it is decreasing in the substitutability of worker types. This...