In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

The aim of this paper is to study the short and long-term fertility effects of mass violent conflict on different population sub-groups. The authors pool three nationally representative demographic and health surveys from before and after the genocide in Rwanda, identifying conflict exposure of...

This paper investigates the relationship between linguistic polarization and conflict in the Basque Country. During the 40 years of Franco's dictatorship the use of the Basque language was banned. Therefore, there may be some linguistic roots underlying the conflict in the Basque Country. 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 2010, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socioeconomic background of these individuals, their education,...

The female share in management positions is quite low in Germany. The higher the hierarchical level, the fewer women there are in such positions. Men have numerous role models to follow whereas women lack this opportunity: In the executive boards of the top 200 private companies in Germany, only...

This paper investigates the determinants of intra-household time allocation in post-war Rwanda. A decade after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda still bears the demographic impact of the war, in which at least 800,000 people died and the majority of casualties were adult males. The paper explores two...

It has previously been shown that civil conflict influences many economic factors, including education, which play an important role in development and economic growth. Previous authors working on the influence of conflict on education have, however, always focused strongly on the supply-side...

Why are female entrepreneurs so rare? Women have both to a lower entry rate into selfemployment and a higher exit rate in Germany. To explain the gender gap, a structural microeconometric model of the transition rates is estimated, which includes a standard risk aversion parameter. As inputs...

The paper investigates the role of social norms as a determinant of individual attitudes by analyzing risk proclivity reported by immigrants and natives in a unique representative German survey. We employ factor analysis to construct measures of immigrants' ethnic persistence and assimilation....

The European Union's strategy to raise employment is confronted with very low work participation among many minority ethnic groups, in particular among immigrants. This study examines the potential of immigrants' identification with the home and host country ethnicity to explain that deficit. It...