"In Germany, there exist around 160 threshold values stating that certain labour laws and regulations apply only in establishments above a critical size (usually defined by the number of employees). As crossing a threshold may result in additional costs for the firm, it is often hypothesized...

It is often argued that in Germany jobs are mostly created in small and medium sized firms, while large firms generally tend to destroy jobs. The so-called Mittelstand is considered as the engine of job creation. Using panel data for manufacturing firms this paper demonstrates that this simple...

The newly created Research Data Centres (or Forschungsdatenzentren) much improved the access of researchers to micro data from official statistics in Germany. This paper surveys selected earlier studies using firm level data with a view on the policy conclusions. We focus on job turnover,...

In western industrialized countries men are on average more than twice as active in entrepreneurship as women. Based on data from a recent representative survey of the adult population in Germany this paper uses an empirical model for the decision to become selfemployed to test for differences...

Nascent entrepreneurs are people who are engaged in creating new ventures. This chapter reviews the international evidence on how many of them are there around the world, what they are doing, who they are, what makes them different, and which ones see their vision through to eventual start-up.

In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the jack-of-all-trades view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-employment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an...

This paper contributes to empirical research in entrepreneurship by focusing on the link between two stylized facts that emerged from a number of studies for Germany and other countries: Entry rates differ between regions, and the propensity to become an entrepreneur is influenced by...

Based on data from a recent representative survey of the adult population in Germany this paper documents that the patterns of variables influencing nascent and infant entrepreneurship are quite similar and broadly in line with our theoretical priors – both types of entrepreneurship are...

Folklore has it that the comparatively low proportion of self-employed in Germany is in part due to a habit that might be termed 'stigmatisation of failure': taking a second chance to build one's own firm after failing as a self-employed is said to be much more difficult here than in other...

The focus of this paper is on the choice of the unemployed between becoming an entrepreneur or not. It contributes to the literature by empirically investigating the impact of personal characteristics and attitudes, and of the regional "entrepreneurial milieu", on the individual decision to...