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...

This paper investigates if significant differences exist between online and paper & pencil participants in a quarterly business survey in the German business-related services sector when respondents may freely choose to respond either online or by more conventional methods. It also analyzes the...

Theory predicts a positive relationship between market concentration and profitability in most scenarios. In empirical work, however, this relation is frequently not found or only a weak connection is observed. We compare the performance of concentration and market share variables, which are...

Increasing participation rates in pupil surveys has become an important challenge for empirical educational research. In this paper we investigate whether combining a monetary incentive with a personalised invitation to participate in a survey increases the response rate of secondary school...

Digital designs - that is, designs for display on electronic screens - have recently burst onto the intellectual property (IP) stage. While in the U.S. a smattering of legal studies have recently addressed the question of digital design as a copyright-, trademark- and patent-eligible subject...

This paper shows that earnings losses after unemployment increase with age. First, older employees start out with relatively high earnings in comparison to employees without employment interruptions several years before the non-employment spell. This earnings advantage turns into a strong...

Labour market reforms that are designed to stimulate labour supply at the lower end of the wage distribution can never be precisely restricted to affect only the target group. Spillovers to and feedback from other segments of the labour market are unavoidable and may counteract the direct...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 2000 to 2006 we analyze the determinants and labor market effects of educational dropout. In addition to classical variables like family background and occupation, we examine noncognitive skills and Internet use. Noncognitive skills...

This paper provides firm-level evidence for the relationship between the age structure of the workforce and the adoption of new or significantly improved technologies in service sector firms. Furthermore, it closes a research gap by analyzing the joint impact of the age of the workforce and the...

This study tests for financial constraints on R&D investment and how they differ from capital investment. To identify constraints in the access to external capital, we employ a credit rating index. Our models show that internal constraints, measured by mark-ups, are more decisive for R&D than...