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...

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...

Often, a person will become an entrepreneur only after a period of dependent employment, suggesting that occupational choices precede entrepreneurial choices. We investigate the relationship between occupational choice and self-employment. The findings suggest that the occupational choice of...

We investigate the effects that new business formation has on employment in incumbent firms and compare it to the development in the start-ups. The analysis is performed for West German regions over the 1984-2002 period. It shows that the employment effects of new businesses on the incumbents...

We analyze different types of effects that new businesses may have on regional employment. We introduce different measures for employment change by separating employment change in incumbent businesses and employment change in new businesses. There are pronounced differences between regions with...

We investigate regional differences in the contribution of newly founded businesses to regional employment. This is labeled the direct employment effect of new businesses. The analysis is at the spatial level of West German planning regions for the period 1984-2002. We find rather pronounced...