In April 1995, 5.3 million people in Germany were on the lookout for a new job opportunity. 177,000 or nearly 3% of those were searching for an opportunity to get self-employed. In this study the determinants of the lookout for selfemployment in lieu of wage work are investigated separately for...

Many entrepreneurs who close a business are actually willing to venture anew. However, to realize a restart is not only a matter of willingness on the part of the entrepreneur but also of its feasibility. Regarding the feasibility of a restart, the aspect of capital acquisition might be...

The performance of young and newly founded firms depends largely to the human capital of the firm owner. The entrepreneur is therefore one of the main success factors for the firm. Yet entrepreneurs differ considerably in their background and characteristics. Particularly, founders’ individual...

Determinants of a firm's export-sales ratio (degree of internationalisation) are frequently discussed in the literature related to individual firms' export activities. Stylised facts show a positive relationship between firm size and firm age on the one hand and the firm's export-sales ratio on...

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

Young firms with the ability to internationalize early and decisively have received much attention in recent academic discussion. However, relatively little is known about the underlying processes that enable them to skip several stages of the internationalization process. We contribute to this...

Human capital is known to be one of the most important predictors of a person's earnings. With regard to entrepreneurial success, founders' human capital is an important determinant of firm's employment growth as well. This paper investigates if the depreciation of a founder's academic knowledge...

So far, there has been no data set which observes firm formations in Germany not only on a cross-sectional basis using one-time surveys, but continuously over a number of years. Therefore, the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), KfW Bankengruppe and Creditreform set up a panel study of...