We assess the relevance of formal education on the productivity of the self-employed and distinguish between opportunity entrepreneurs, who voluntarily pursue a business opportunity, and necessity entrepreneurs, who lack alternative employment options. We expect differences in the returns to...

Human capital has been shown to be highly important in the venture creation process. In this study, we account for the fact that human capital on the individual and regional levels may be interrelated in affecting entrepreneurship. We use German survey data, which allow us to focus on a specific...

Using a "fuzzy" regression discontinuity design, we examine the short-run impacts of a vocational training program on self-employment, new business plans, entry into entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial traits using data from the Nepal Employment Fund training program, which funds training...

We analyze the effects of intangible investment on international output synchronization. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we find that an increase in the importance of intangible capital leads to a higher degree of output comovement across countries. Therefore, countries in...

This paper investigates the role intangible capital plays for economic growth in different sectors in Germany. It consists of two major parts. In the first part, we aim at measuring investment in intangibles at the sector level. We shed light on differences across sectors but also compare these...

This paper looks at the channels through which intangible assets affect productivity. The econometric analysis exploits a new dataset on intangible investment (INTAN-Invest) in conjunction with EUKLEMS productivity estimates for 10 EU member states from 1998 to 2007. We find that (a) the...

This contribution analyzes the impact of intangible capital on labor productivity growth across countries at the aggregate and sectoral levels by employing an econometric growth-accounting approach. First, our results show that intangible capital deepening accounts for around 40 percent of labor...

This contribution analyzes the impact of intangible capital on labor productivity growth across countries at the aggregate and sectoral levels by employing an econometric growth-accounting approach. First, our results show that intangible capital deepening accounts for around 50 percent of labor...

This study explores the impact of social capital on innovation by constructing a more general measure of social capital indicator consisting of generalized and institutional trust, associational activities and civic norms. We test the hypothesis that social capital has a positive impact on...

Entrepreneurs are found to have balanced skill sets and most have worked in small firms before starting their own business. In light of this, we compare the skill sets of employees working in businesses of different size to the skill sets of entrepreneurs using a rich data set on the applied...