This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which...

Experimental evidence reveals that there is a strong willingness to trust and to act in both positively and negatively reciprocal ways. So far it is rarely analyzed whether these variables of social cognition influence everyday decision making behavior. We focus on entrepreneurs who are...

This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans – in particular instalment loans and overdrafts – to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal...

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...

This paper empirically analyzes whether the character-based approach, which is based on the personality structure and the human capital of business founders, allows prediction of entrepreneurial success. A unique data set is used consisting of 414 previously unemployed persons whose personal...

When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because...

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 impact...

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 data, the German Micro-Census, we provide an overview of the development of self-employment and entrepreneurship in Germany between 1991 and 2010, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socioeconomic background of these individuals, their education,...