This paper summarizes the role of entrepreneurship in the East German transformation process that followed the breakdown of the socialist regime and subsequent unification with West Germany. The main aim of this exercise is to derive conclusions and recommendations for a potential unification of...

The unification of the East and West German states in 1990 initiated the integration of two distinct innovation systems. In this process, the poorly functioning socialist system of East Germany adopted the formal institutions and organization of West Germany, a western-style market economy. We...

Empirical estimations of the drivers for loan extension mainly apply the outstanding stock of bank credit as the dependent variable. This paper picks up the critique of Behrendt (2016), namely that such estimations may lead to misleading results, as the change of the stock is not only driven by...

This paper focuses on foreign language learning as human capital investment or consumption. We apply the human capital investment framework to foreign language learning and enlarge it by adding consumption motives. Based on a novel dataset collected from language course participants in 14...

Empirical research on the monetary transmission mechanism considering credit developments is almost exclusively limited to the amount of outstanding credit in an economy. Two issues arise out of this. First, stock-flow inconsistencies might occur. Second, the change of the outstanding amount of...

The last decades saw a pronounced shift in innovation policy in Germany and many other countries towards increased funding of cooperative R&D. Over the last years, competitions between regional initiatives pushed this trend even further by adding a regional perspective, by increasing the scope...

Being a "jack-of-all-trades" increases the probability of running an entrepreneurial venture successfully; but what happens to "jack-of-few-trades" who lack sufficient skills? This paper investigates a possible compensation mechanism between balanced skills and cities, and how this compensatory...

Previous research on market economies characterized by stable framework conditions shows that several regional factors determine start-up activity. Not much is known about what drives entrepreneurship in unstable environments characterized by significant institutional changes that affect the...

A new model of economic growth introduces the knowledge filter between new generic knowledge and economically-useful knowledge. It identifies both the formation of new ventures and the absorptive capacity of incumbent firms as the mechanisms that penetrate the knowledge filter. Recent empirical...

A new model of economic growth introduces the knowledge filter between new knowledge and economically useful knowledge. It identifies both new ventures and incumbent firms as the mechanisms that penetrate the knowledge filter. Recent empirical work has shown that new firms are more proficient at...