We study the role of professional networks in facilitating emigration of Jewish academics dismissed from their positions by the Nazi government. We use individual-level exogenous variation in the timing of dismissals to estimate causal eects. Academics with more ties to early émigrés...

We use the elements of a macroeconomic production function – physical capital, human capital, labor, and technology – together with standard growth models to frame the role of religion in economic growth. Unifying a growing literature, we argue that religion can enhance or impinge upon...

We study the role of professional networks in facilitating emigration of Jewish academics dismissed from their positions by the Nazi government. We use individual-level exogenous variation in the timing of dismissals to estimate causal effects. Academics with more ties to early émigrés...

German separation in 1949 into a communist East and a capitalist West and their reunification in 1990 are commonly described as a natural experiment to study the enduring effects of communism. We show in three steps that the populations in East and West Germany were far from being randomly...

The German government has spent between 7bn and 11bn Euro per year on active labor market policies (ALMP) in East Germany in the last decade. The effectiveness of the most important programs (in terms of participants and spending) such as job-creation schemes and vocational training has been...

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

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,...

The in°uence of risk aversion on the decision to become self-employed is a much discussed topic in the entrepreneurial literature. Conventional wisdom asserts that being an entrepreneur means making risky decisions in uncertain environments; hence more risk-averse individuals are less likely to...

Die Existenzgründungsförderung für Arbeitslose gewinnt als arbeitsmarktpolitisches Instrument in Deutschland zunehmend an Bedeutung. Mit der Einführung des Existenzgründungszuschusses (ExGZ) zum 1.1.2003 steht gründungswilligen Arbeitslosen – neben dem Überbrückungsgeld (ÜG) – nun...

This paper empirically analyzes whether the character-based approach, which is based on the personality structure and the human capital of business founders, allows prediction of entrepreneurial success. A unique data set is used consisting of 414 previously unemployed persons whose personal...