We study how the presence of a college affects the local economy using administrative data. Our analysis exploits the opening of new institutions of tertiary education across Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. The new college substantially increased the student population and share of high-skilled...

Start-up subsidies for the unemployed have long been an important active labor market policy strategy in Germany. The current subsidy program underwent a major reform in 2011 that changed its key parameters: support was lowered, eligibility criteria were tightened and entitlement was abandoned...

Creative industries comprise enterprises focusing on the creation, production, and distribution of creative or cultural goods and services. Following an explorative empirical approach, we analyze start-ups in creative industries regarding three issues along the start-up process: (1) personal...

We analyze whether start-up rates in different industries systematically change with business cycle variables. Using a unique data set at the industry level, we mostly find correlations that are consistent with counter-cyclical influences of the business cycle on entries in both innovative and...

This paper investigates four cohorts of firms from German manufacturing industries that started to export in the years between 1998 and 2002 and follows them over the five years after the start. Export starters are a rare species and they are small on average compared to incumbent exporters....

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms. Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firm characteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explaining young firms'...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become an increasingly important part of active labor market policies (ALMP) in many OECD countries. Germany is a good example where the spending on start-up subsidies for the unemployed accounted for nearly 17% of the total spending on ALMP in 2004....

Women start fewer businesses than men. The start-up rate among women in Germany falls short of males' start-up rate by one third. We scrutinize this gender gap using individual-level data from the KfW Start-up Monitor, a large-scale population survey on start-up activity in Germany. As a unique...

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...

So far, there has been no data set which observes firm formations in Germany not only on a cross-sectional basis using one-time surveys, but continuously over a number of years. Therefore, the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), KfW Bankengruppe and Creditreform set up a panel study of...