We use the historical self-employment rate as an indicator of a regional culture of entrepreneurship and link this measure to economic growth in recent periods. The results indicate that German regions with a high level of entrepreneurship in the mid- 1920s have higher start-up rates about 80...

We investigate how major historical shocks affect regional trajectories of economic activity. To this end, we conduct a comparative analysis of the development of entrepreneurship in East and West Germany after World War II. The introduction of an anti-entrepreneurial socialist economy in East...

Our use of longitudinal register data combined with a unique survey allows us to offer a more comprehensive picture of rural self-employment than in previous studies. We find that selfemployed in rural settings are more likely than those in metropolitan regions to employ others, but...

We describe and analyze the long-term development of self-employment in German regions between 1895 and 2019. Based on rankings ("league tables") for the two years we identify those regions where the relative level of self-employment significantly increased ('leapfroggers'), and those where the...