Whilst internationally, the Mittelstand in Germany is admired and many countries try to emulate it, the current debate in Germany praises the Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship, contrasting the Mittelstand as low-growth, low-tech and non-innovative - in short: as a hindrance to Germany's...

Bis heute gibt es kein gemeinsames, weithin akzeptiertes und konsequent angewandtes Verständnis dessen, was den Mittelstand ausmacht. Die meisten empirischen Untersuchungen zu mittelständischen Unternehmen stützen sich auf Daten von kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU). Obwohl diese...

This paper analyzes the impact of family firms' past and future economic viability on the incumbents' decision on the business transfer mode. Using the German IAB Establishment Panel and estimating logistic regression models we show that the decision on the business transfer mode rather depends...

While existing research on business successions stresses the importance of the economic situation of family business in this context, research on women's entrepreneurship, however, suggests that women-led businesses may be less economically attractive for potential successors because of...

This research note examines the relationship between start-up rates and GDP per capita growth in urban and rural regions in Germany. Hereby, we take into account that urban and rural areas differ markedly in their resource endowment for entrepreneurship, which might be responsible for different...

This paper utilizes German tax data to present evidence about the direct and indirect effects of new firm formation. Cohort analysis is applied to investigate survival, sales, inputs, and value added of start-up firms. Most drop-outs occur in the early years. We show that start-up...

This paper analyzes how statutory entitlements to maternity or parental leave affect female entry into self-employment after childbirth. For our estimations we use comprehensive panel data for German adults born between 1944 and 1989. We find that utilization of statutory parental leave...

It is well known that the self-employed are over-represented at the bottom as well as the top of the income distribution. This paper shifts the focus from the income situation of the self-employed to the distributive effects of a change in self-employment rates. With representative German data...

Young firms are known to grow at a faster rate than incumbents. With administrative firm data from Germany, we show that the higher growth rates indeed translate into upward mobility within the firm size distribution. Young firms are therefore not only able to catch up, but also to grow larger...