The 40 years of socialist regime in East Germany were characterized by a massive anti-entrepreneurship policy. We investigate the reemergence of entrepreneurship in East Germany during its transformation to a market economy following the collapse of the East German state in 1989. It took about...

Could the industrialization reduce social inequalities? We use the rise of office employment in the early 20th century as a historical experiment to study the effect of technological change on labor market access for vulnerable groups. In regions with industries that were strongly connected to...

New business formation plays an important role for economic development. Therefore, policy makers put emphasis on fostering start-up activity. Aims and scope of entrepreneurs can be just as heterogeneous as the structure of new ventures. The project "New business formation and the labor market...

Being a jack-of-all-trades increases the probability of running an entrepreneurial venture successfully; but what happens to jack-of-few-trades who lack sufficient skills? This paper investigates a possible compensation mechanism between balanced skills and cities, and how this compensatory...

Could complex changes in the labor market reduce social inequalities across regions? We study the rise of office employment in the early twentieth century that was induced by innovations in office technology and organizational changes affecting the type of required office tasks. The new office...

With a survey experiment conducted in Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden, we investigate how EU citizens rank themselves within the EU. In all four countries, (mis-)perceptions of EU income positions result primarily from respondents' (incomplete) information about their national position and...

We examine the relationship between perceived income positions and attitudes towards inequality at a supranational-level. Conducting a survey in four EU Member States (Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden), we confirm that their citizens misperceive their own income position in the EU. Once we...

This paper presents an analytical setup that makes predictions for the relationships between firm and occupation specific human capital and job switches. The predictions are then tested using the task based approach. The results, based on data for Germany, show that the degree to which firm...

Research since Gary Becker equated specific human capital with firm-specific human capital. This paper divides firm human capital into a specific and a general component to investigate the relationships between firm- and occupation-specific human capital and job switches. Applying the task-based...

Contrary to employees, there is no clear evidence that entrepreneurs' education positively effects income. In this study we propose that entrepreneurs can benefit from their education as a signal during the recruitment process of employees. This process is then assumed to follow a matching of...