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,...

We investigate whether people are more willing to become self-employed during boom periods or during recessions and to what extent business cycles or unemployment levels influence entries into entrepreneurship. Our analysis for Germany reveals that there is a positive relationship between...

Germany experienced a unique rise in the level of self-employment in the first two decades following unification. Applying the non-linear Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique, we find that the main factors driving these changes in the overall level of self-employment are demographic...

Based on representative micro data for Germany, we compare the incomes of self-employed with those of wage workers. Our results show that the median self-employed entrepreneur with employees earns significantly more than the median salaried employee, while the median solo entrepreneur earns...