The private sector plays a pivotal role in fighting corruption worldwide. Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2009 documents in unique detail the many corruption risks for businesses, ranging from small entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa to multinationals from Europe and North...

Vor dem Hintergrund von Markt- und Staatsversagenstatbeständen leitet die wirtschaftstheoretische Literatur mögliche Hemmnisse für Existenzgründungen ab. Die vorliegende Studie unternimmt eine Systematisierung unterschiedlicher Facetten entsprechender empirischer Evidenz. Hierbei liegt ein...

Employing a large dataset regarding venture capital investments in US Internet firms, we analyze the effect of the current financial crisis on the venture capital market. Using regression analysis, we find that the financial crisis led to a 20% decrease in the average amount of funds raised per...

The notion of risk and entrepreneurship has been widely discussed in the entrepreneurship literature. Starting a business involves risk and requires a risk-taking attitude. Most studies have com-pared entrepreneurs with non-entrepreneurs such as managers or bankers. So far, little research...

This study analyzes the effect of the 2008 financial crisis on the venture capital market. We show that the crisis is associated with a decrease in the number of initial funding rounds as well as with a decrease in the amount of funds raised in later funding rounds. The effects of the crisis...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP), we analyze whether necessity and opportunity entrepreneurs differ in terms of self-employment duration. We find that the two types of entrepreneurs differ regarding their duration in self-employment. Once controlled for educational...

Family firms are important not only for a region but for the economy as a whole. In particular, the long-term orientation and the local embeddedness of family firms suggest a positive effect on regional innovation activity. Yet, despite the widely acknowledged importance of family firms for the...

Support of business start-ups is partially motivated by social policy objectives. The paper discusses these social policy objectives on a conceptual and empirical basis. Its focus is on start-ups out of unemployment. Implications for the design and the evaluation of socially motivated start-up...

Lazear’s concept of skill variety has been established in entrepreneurship research and is con-sidered an important extension to human capital theory. The literature on skill variety, its de-terminants and its effects on entrepreneurial outcomes is growing. But especially the literature on...

Our paper uses data from the German Socio Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) to analyze how necessity and opportunity entrepreneurs differ in kind and in earnings and what the determinants of the latter are. We estimate probit and random effects panel data models in order to address these questions....