The focus of this paper is on the choice of the unemployed between becoming an entrepreneur or not. It contributes to the literature by empirically investigating two hitherto neglected issues: What is the impact of risk aversion and personal contact with a role model in shaping the decision to...

Nascent entrepreneurs are people who are engaged in creating new ventures. This chapter reviews the international evidence on how many of them are there around the world, what they are doing, who they are, what makes them different, and which ones see their vision through to eventual start-up.

Die Gründung eines Unternehmens ist ein Prozess, der damit beginnt, dass jemand Zeit und andere Ressourcen aufwendet, um die Entstehung einer neuen wirtschaftsaktiven Einheit "auf die Schiene zu setzen". Tut er dies (allein oder mit anderen) auf eigene Rechnung - und nicht als Teil seiner...

Folklore has it that the comparatively low proportion of self-employed in Germany in in part due to a habit that might be termed "stigmatisation of failure": taking a second chance to build one's own firm after failing as a self-employed is said to be much more difficult here than in other...

This paper tests the theory recently put forward by Edward Lazear that individuals with competence in many skills should have a higher probability of being self-employed than others. The empirical results for Germany support this jack-of-all-trades view.