We investigate how a transition from paid employment to self-employment in the labor market influences life satisfaction. Furthermore, we consider the dynamics of work and leisure satisfaction because the balance between work and leisure is an important element of life satisfaction....

What is the effect of dispersed levels of cognitive ability of members of a (business) team on their teamś performance? This paper reports the results of a field experiment in which 573 students in 49 teams start up and manage real companies under identical circumstances. We ensured exogenous...

The founder (team)ś human capital is a vital determinant of future firm performance. This is a stylized fact. Less is known about the effect of the human capital of the initial workforce hired by the founder(s). We study the performance consequences of a founderś choice of the initial...

Job satisfaction of self-employed and paid-employed workers is analyzed using the European Community Household Panel for the EU-15 covering the years 1994-2001. We distinguish between two types of job satisfaction, i.e. job satisfaction in terms of type of work and job satisfaction in terms of...

Policy in developed countries is often based on the assumption that higher business ownership rates induce economic value. Recent microeconomic empirical evidence casts doubts on the validity of this assumption or, at least, leads to a more nuanced view: Especially the top performing business...

How and why does the firm size distribution differ across countries? Using two datasets covering more than 30 countries, this paper documents that several features of the firm size distribution are strongly associated with income per capita: the entrepreneurship rate and the fraction of small...

Theories of market failures and targeting motivate the promotion of entrepreneurship training programs and generate testable predictions regarding heterogeneous treatment effects from such programs. Using a large randomized evaluation in the United States, we find no strong or lasting effects on...

Parental entrepreneurship is a strong, probably the strongest, determinant of own entrepreneurship. We explore the origins of this intergenerational association in entrepreneurship. In particular, we identify the separate effects of pre- and post-birth factors (nature and nurture), by using a...