This paper studies the event history of business foundation. Three theoretical concepts of human, financial and social capital are linked to investigate variations over time of people's decision processes to become self-employed. Data from a cohort of Dutch inhabitants born in 1939/1940 who have...

Our analysis of the survival of firms leads to the important result that the hypotheses about differences between various industries in the life duration of new firms and about the importance of the region of location for the probability of survival are confirmed. Many more enterprises are...

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...