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...

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health,...

The existential threat to small businesses, based on their crucial role in the economy, is behind the plethora of scholarly studies in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining the 14 contributions of the special issue on the "Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on...

Der Koalitionsvertrag sieht zwar keine weitreichenden familienpolitischen Maßnahmen vor. Allerdings sollen die Kindertagesbetreuung und das Elterngeld weiter ausgebaut werden. Damit folgt die Große Koalition zumindest teilweise einer Studie mehrerer Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute, die alle...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war mark a turning point for the German labour market. These crises accelerate transformative forces that have been at work for some time, such as digitalisation and decarbonisation, and are likely to permanently change the international division of labour...

The influence of risk aversion on the decision to become self-employed is a much discussed topic in the entrepreneurial literature. Conventional wisdom asserts that the role model of an entrepreneur requires to make risky decisions in uncertain environments and hence that more risk-averse...