New business formation plays an important role for economic development. Therefore, policy makers put emphasis on fostering start-up activity. Aims and scope of entrepreneurs can be just as heterogeneous as the structure of new ventures. The project "New business formation and the labor market...

This paper investigates the employment growth of small and medium-sized firms that survived the transformation process of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). We find that firms founded in the later period of the GDR’s existence have especially low growth prospects, even 10 years after German...

At the start of the German unification process it was a commonly held view that east German living conditions will converge to west Geman levels within a few years. This view was not only held by notoriously optimistic politicians but also by a great many of professional economists. With...