Based on a large, representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent the personality of individuals influences the entry decision into and the exit decision from self-employment. We reveal that some traits, such as openness to experience, extraversion, and risk tolerance affect...

L2, L26, O3, O4. </AbstractSection> Copyright Herrmann and Kritikos; licensee Springer. 2013

Unregulated credit markets will not finance the majority of unemployed people when they aim to receive a loan for running their own business. In the US an optimal policy mix reduces the entry barriers so that the most promising self-employment business plans are self-selected and financed via a...

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 2011, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socio-economic background of these individuals, their...

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...

"The promotion of business start-ups by formerly unemployed individuals has become an increasingly important instrument of German active labour market policy (ALMP) in recent years. With the introduction of the start-up subsidy (Existenzgründungszuschuss) on 1.1.2003 unemployed individuals who...

Reciprocity is a decisive behavioural rule resulting in successful co-operation or deterrence. In this paper, a dynamic model is proposed, where reciprocity is described by changes in altruistic (or malevolent) ties. Multiple steady states may exist in one of which there may be general...

Normative Game theory does not consider cooperation in a Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) as a serious strategy. Recent research has, therefore, introduced nonmonetary values to explain why individuals may choose to cooperate in PD-Games. It is not explained, however, where the values come from. Under...