Drawing on representative household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the role of an early precursor of entrepreneurial development - parental role models - for the individual decision to become self-employed in the post-unified Germany. The findings suggest that the...

Using panel data from Spain Farinas and Ruano (IJIO 2005) test three hypotheses from a model by Hopenhayn (Econometrica 1992): (H1) Firms that exit in year t were in t-1 less productive than firms that continue to produce in t. (H2) Firms that enter in year t are less productive than incumbent...

A recent survey of 54 micro-econometric studies reveals that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. On the other hand, previous empirical studies show that exporting does not necessarily improve productivity. One possible reason for this result is that most previous studies are...

This paper contributes to the flourishing literature on exports and productivity by using a unique newly available panel of exporting establishments from the manufac-turing sector of Germany from 1995 to 2004 to test three hypotheses derived from a theoretical model by Hopenhayn (Econometrica...

Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality data at the plant level, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship bet-ween productivity and size of the export market for Germany, a leading actor on the world market for manufactured goods. It...

Using unique new data and a recently introduced non-linear decomposition technique this paper shows that the huge difference in the propensity to export between West and East German plants is to a large part due to differences in firm size and human capital intensity.

Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality longitudinal data at the plant level, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between exports and productivity for Germany, a leading actor on the world market for manufactured goods. It...

We investigate the relationship between cultural creativity and entrepreneurship in two respects: first, cultural and personal creativity as a characteristic of self-employed individuals; second, selfemployment in professions that can be classified as belonging to the 'Creative Class' as...

We investigate the effect of broad personality traits' - the Big Five - on an individua's decision to become self-employed. In particular, we test an overall indicator of the entrepreneurial personality. Since we find that the level of self-employment varies considerably across professions, we...

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 2011, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socio-economic background of these individuals, their...