Theoretical and empirical research suggests a connection between the presence of role models and the emergence of entrepreneurs. Existing entrepreneurs may act as role models for self-employment candidates by providing successful examples. By explicitly considering the self-employment rates of...

Self-employment is often seen as an attractive alternative to wage employment, despite lower welfare protection, higher risks, and more required effort than in the latter. It is then important to investigate why individuals choose self-employment. In addition to potential earnings, other factors...

During the last few decades the world has experienced an unprecedented level of cross-border migration. While this has generated significant socio-economic gains for host countries, as well as sometimes for the countries of origin, the costs and benefits involved are unevenly distributed....

Immigrant self-employment rates vary considerably across regions in Switzerland. Business ownership seems to provide an alternative to wage labour, where immigrants have to face structural barriers such as the limited knowledge of the local language, or difficulties in fruitfully making use of...

As observed in many advanced economies experiencing an increase of self-employment rates since the late 1970s, a flourishing small- and medium-size enterprise sector is traditionally associated with positive economic development and growth. In the regional context, areas benefiting from an...

In this paper, we present a review of various computational experiments - and consequent results - concerning Neural Network (NN) models developed for regional employment forecasting. NNs are widely used in several fields because of their flexible specification structure. Their utilization in...

We analyse the links between soccer match results, bets and stock returns of all listed European soccer teams. Using an event study approach, we measure abnormal returns following wins, ties and losses. Wins are associated with positive abnormal returns, and ties and losses with negative...

Demographic change is expected to affect labour markets in very different ways on a regional scale. The objective of this paper is to explore the spatio-temporal patterns of recent distributional changes in the workers age structure, innovation output and skill composition for German regions by...

In any economic analysis, regions or municipalities should not be regarded as isolated spatial units, but rather as highly interrelated small open economies. These spatial interrelations must be considered also when the aim is to forecast economic variables. For example, policy makers need...