In a recent paper Edward Lazear proposed the "Jack-of-all-trades" view of entrepreneurship. Based on a coherent model of the choice between self-employment and paid employment he shows that having a background in a large number of different roles increases the probability of becoming an...

This paper is a portrait of the series European Data Watch that is published in Schmollers Jahrbuch/Journal of Applied Social Science Studies since 2000. Contributions to this series describe data for persons or firms that can be used in empirical research in economics and the social sciences,...

Mit einem neu verfügbaren repräsentativen Längsschnittdatensatz für 1999 bis 2006 dokumentiert die vorliegende Studie erstmals umfassend für deutsche Industrieunternehmen die Verbreitung von subventionierten und nicht subventionierten Unternehmen in West- und Ostdeutschland und die...

From a model by Hopenhayn, three hypotheses can be derived: (H1) Firms that exit in year t were less productive in t-1 than firms that continue to produce in t. (H2) Firms that enter in year t are less productive than incumbent firms in year t. (H3) Surviving firms from an entry cohort were more...

Using newly available representative longitudinal data for German manufacturing enterprises over the period 1999 to 2006 this study presents the first comprehensive empirical evidence on subsidized and non-subsidized firms in East and West Germany. The share of subsidized firms in all firms was...

This paper uses unique new data for German manufacturing enterprises from matched regular surveys and a special purpose survey to investigate the causal effect of relocation of activities to a foreign country on various dimensions of firm performance. Enterprises that relocated activities abroad...

Heterogeneous firms are at the heart of both the New New International Trade Theory and the Micro-econometrics of International Firm Activities. One important aim of microeconometric studies is to uncover stylized facts that hold over space and time, and that can both inspire theoretical models...

This paper investigates four cohorts of firms from German manufacturing industries that started to export in the years between 1998 and 2002 and follows them over the five years after the start. Export starters are a rare species and they are small on average compared to incumbent exporters....