In Germany self-employment among foreigners increased significantly in recent years. We study the geographical distribution of ethnic minority self-employment in Germany and find determinants for variations in start-up activities across 440 administrative German regions. We analyze the Statistic...

Background: We investigate the relationship between the rate at which new firms are established and regional characteristics and whether this relationship is constant over space or not. The characteristics reflect (i) agglomerations that in turn are related to increasing returns to production...

To date there has been few systematic and comparative empirical analyses of the nature of economic development in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). We contribute to addressing this gap by exploring the patterns of structural change between 1980 and 2010, focusing on the...

Traditional economic theory posits that a well functioning capital market is a necessary condition for industrialization and economic growth. However, in reality it is observed that micro and small enterprises are ubiquitous because entrepreneurs can set up business in low-return activities with...

The one-month confinement (or doing the month, DM) for post-partum women is a tradition that has been practiced for millennia in Chinese society. Tedious preparations and numerous procedures of DM incur high transaction costs when purchasing the service from the market. To assure the practice of...