In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

This paper outlines the importance of labor mobility for the improvement in allocating and distributing economic resources. We are faced with an increasing lack of skilled workers and a growing tendency of unemployment amongst the low-skilled. A central political objective for the future will...

Why do people engage in entrepreneurship and commit large parts of their personal wealth to their business, despite comparably low returns and high risk? This paper connects several streams of literature to shed some light on this puzzle and suggests possible future research avenues. Key...

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 2010, the first two decades after reunification. We investigate the socioeconomic background of these individuals, their education,...

The financial crisis in 2008/2009 substantially influenced the everyday social and economic life of many Tajik people, including their behavior in the labor market. However, not much is known about the dynamics of the labor markets of the transition economies, especially in the context of the...

Risk attitudes have an impact on not only the decision to become an entrepreneur but also the survival and failure rates of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become an entrepreneur,...

There are few studies on occupational choices in Germany, and the second generation occupational choice and mobility is even less investigated. Such research is important because occupations determine success in the labor market. In a country like Germany occupations also reflect a general...

Mobility of workers involves flows of labour, human capital and other production factors and thus contributes to a more efficient allocation of resources. Besides these effects on allocative efficiency, migrant flows affect relative wages and also change the international and national...

Unemployment rates are often higher for migrants than for natives. This could result from longer periods of unemployment as well as from shorter periods of employment. This paper jointly examines male native-migrant differences in the duration of unemployment and subsequent employment using...

This study develops a time series model of Turkish migration to Germany for the period 1963-2004 using the cointegration technique. A single cointegrating relation between the migration flow variable and the relative income ratio between Germany and Turkey, the unemployment rates in Germany and...