The paper attempts to examine the extent to which the ILO-supported projects have contributed to women's economic empowerment and well-being i.e., from a gender perspective. The paper provides the ILO's perspectives on gender dimensions of employment promotion (involving income generation and...

We investigate the effect of broad personality traits - the Big Five - on an individual's decision to become self-employed. In particular, we test an overall indicator of the entrepreneurial personality. Since we find that the level of selfemployment varies considerably across professions, we...

We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which individuals maintain for non-economic reasons can be an important determinant of regional economic growth. We show that West German households who have social ties to East Germany in 1989 experience a persistent...

The literature focusing on the geography of entrepreneurship has developed some-thing of a schizophrenic approach. On the one hand is a series of studies, which have tried to identify characteristics specific to particular regions that account for inter-spatial variations in entrepreneurship. On...

Using an agency framework, this paper examines advantages of offering venture capitalists a choice between public equity and loan schemes. Both schemes can be used to promote venture capital investments in hightechnology enterprises since they encourage inexperienced venture capitalists to...

We apply a multi-level approach to analyze simultaneously the effects of three groups of determinants on new firm formation: industry, location and change over time. The data is for West Germany and covers the 1983-97 period. Our analysis indicates that innovation activities and the...

Financial theory creates a puzzle. Some authors argue that high-risk entrepreneurs choose debt contracts instead of equity contracts since risky but high returns are of relatively more value for a loan-financed firm. On the contrary, authors who focus explicitly on start-up finance predict that...

This paper contributes to the policy-relevant question whether self-employment is a way out of (long-term) unemployment. We estimate the relationship between the entry rate into self-employment and previous (long-term) unemployment on the basis of pseudo-panel data for Germany in the period...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become a major focus of German active labour market policy (ALMP) in recent years. If effective, this would not only reduce Germany?s persistently high unemployment rate, but also increase its notoriously low self-employment rate. Empirical evidence...

We answer the questions, how many firms acting in the modern German biotechnology industry are funded by venture capital companies (VCC) as well as equity funded by corporate investors. The theory suggests a high relevance of VCC as venturing partner of high-tech projects. In addition we argue...