Drawing on representative household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the role of an early precursor of entrepreneurial development - parental role models - for the individual decision to become self-employed in the post-unified Germany. The findings suggest that the...

We investigate the persistence of levels of self-employment and new business formation in different time periods and under different framework conditions. The analysis shows that high levels of regional self-employment and new business formation tend to be persistent for periods as long as 80...

The 40 years of socialist regime in East Germany were characterized by a massive anti-entrepreneurship policy. We investigate the reemergence of entrepreneurship in East Germany during its transformation to a market economy following the collapse of the East German state in 1989. It took about...

The paper reviews the approaches that have been followed for analyzing the effect of new business formation on regional development. It begins with an outline of how start-ups may affect regional development. In dealing with different ways of empirically assessing these effects, I particularly...

Often, a person will become an entrepreneur only after a period of dependent employment, suggesting that occupational choices precede entrepreneurial choices. We investigate the relationship between occupational choice and self-employment. The findings suggest that the occupational choice of...

We argue that entrepreneurial choice proceeds in at least in two steps, with vocational choice nearly always preceding choice of employment status, whether that be self-employment or dependent employment. Since the two decisions are interrelated, analysis of entrepreneurial choice as a single...

We analyze the sources of the rise in the levels of self-employment in Germany since reunification by applying the non-linear Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique. This analysis is performed separately for East and West Germany in order to account for the East German recovery of...

It has widely been recognized that creativity plays an immense role not only for arts, sciences, and technology, but also for entrepreneurship, innovation, and thus, economic growth. We analyze the level and the determinants of self-employment in creative professions at the level of individuals....

We investigate whether people become more willingly self-employed during boom periods or in recessions and to what extent it is the business cycle or the employment status influencing entry rates into entrepreneurship. Our analysis for Germany reveals that start-up activities are positively...

Several empirical studies showed that it is not the level of entrepreneurial activity itself, but the (long-term) survival and growth of new firms that determine the direct and indirect contribution of new businesses to regional employment. To this end, the aim of this paper is to analyze the...