The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected not only incumbent firms, but also the emergence of start-ups. This paper investigates and analyzes the pandemic's effect on new business formation, as well as business exits and insolvencies, in Germany. We find that the overall level of business...

We describe and compare the development trajectories of two German regions, South Saxony and Mecklenburg, with a special focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. South Saxony has a long history of self-employment and knowledge generation that results in a persistent culture of innovative...

We describe and analyze the long-term development of self-employment in German regions between 1895 and 2019. Based on rankings ("league tables") for the two years we identify those regions where the relative level of self-employment significantly increased ('leapfroggers'), and those where the...

The 40 years of socialist regime in East Germany were characterized by a massive anti-entrepreneurship policy. We investigate the reemergence of entrepreneurship in East Germany during its transformation to a market economy following the collapse of the East German state in 1989. It took about...

We explore the role of different types of self-employment for a persistence of the regional level of entrepreneurship over time. Our analysis for West German regions shows relatively strong effects for the historical self- employment rate in the non-agricultural sector, particularly in...

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...

We investigate the persistence of levels of self-employment and new business formation in different time periods and under different framework conditions. The analysis shows that high levels of regional self-employment and new business formation tend to be persistent for periods as long as 80...

Emerging literature shows that spatial differences in entrepreneurship tend to persist over longer periods of time. A potential mechanism underlying this pronounced persistence is that high levels of start-up activity lead to the emergence of a regional culture and a supporting environment in...

We use the historical self-employment rate as an indicator of a regional culture of entrepreneurship and link this measure to economic growth in recent periods. The results indicate that German regions with a high level of entrepreneurship in the mid- 1920s have higher start-up rates about 80...

A region's present-day economic performance can be deeply anchored in historical factors. We provide the first systematic evidence of a deep imprinting effect in the context of Roman rule in the south-western part of Germany nearly 2,000 years ago. Our analysis reveals that regions in the former...