The influence of risk aversion on the decision to become self-employed is a much discussed topic in the entrepreneurial literature. Conventional wisdom asserts that the role model of an entrepreneur requires to make risky decisions in uncertain environments and hence that more risk-averse...

The paper investigates the role of social norms as a determinant of individual attitudes by analyzing risk proclivity reported by immigrants and natives in a unique representative German survey. We employ factor analysis to construct measures of immigrants' ethnic persistence and assimilation....

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,...

This paper questions the perceived wisdom that migrants are more risk-loving than the native population. We employ a new large German survey of direct individual risk measures to find that first-generation migrants have lower risk attitudes than natives, which only equalize in the second generation.

In this paper we study the economic effects of risk attitudes, time preferences, trust and reciprocity while we compare natives and second generation migrants. We analyze an inflow sample into unemployment in Germany, and find differences between the two groups mainly in terms of risk attitudes...

In a series of experimental games, each of two players may choose between remuneration based on either private or team effort. Although at least one of the players has the subgame perfect equilibrium strategy to choose remuneration based on private effort, we frequently observe team remuneration...

The article discusses the conflict of goals between fair compensation for performance and equitable support based on need in modern welfare states, which is a subject of controversy in various disciplines. It answers the question of the extent to which this policy problem of modern welfare...

Previous poverty assessments for Burkina Faso were due to the neglect of some important methodological issues misleading and led to the so-called 'Burkinabè Growth-Poverty-Paradox', i.e. relatively sustained macro-economic growth, but almost constant poverty. We estimate that poverty...

We link life-satisfaction data to inequality of the pre- and post-government income distribution at the regional level, to estimate the degree of inequality aversion. Three different inequality measures are used. In addition, we investigate whether a reduction in inequality by the state...