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...

We investigate whether people become more willingly self-employed during boom periods or in recessions and to what extent it is the business cycle or the employment status influencing entry rates into entrepreneurship. Our analysis for Germany reveals that start-up activities are positively...

We analyze the sources of the rise in the levels of self-employment in Germany since reunification by applying the non-linear Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique. This analysis is performed separately for East and West Germany in order to account for the East German recovery of...

This paper analyzes the role of different types of institutions, such as entrepreneurship- facilitating entry conditions, labor market regulations, quality of government, and perception of corruption for individual well-being among self-employed and paid employed individuals. Well-being is...

This paper investigates whether the relationship between a person 's occupational status and well -being differs across countries with varying institutional contexts. We find that the relationship between job - and life satisfaction of self -employed people as well as of paid employees varies...

We investigate whether the Roman presence in the southern part of Germany nearly 2,000 years ago had a deep imprinting effect with long run consequences on a broad spectrum of measures ranging from present-day personality profiles to a number of socioeconomic outcomes and why. Today's...

There is a research gap with respect to understanding the role of entrepreneurial culture and tradition for actual start-up behaviour. We combine historical self-employment data (entrepreneurial tradition) with a psychological measure for entrepreneurial attitudes (entrepreneurial culture). The...

We propose an extension of the standard occupational choice model to analyze the life satisfaction of senior entrepreneurs as compared to paid employees and particularly retirees in Germany. The analysis identifies income and health status as main factors that shape the relationship between...