Many start-ups chose to compete with incumbent firms using one of two generic strategies: cost leadership or differentiation. Our study demonstrates how this choice depends on whether the startup was founded out of necessity. Our results, based on a representative data set of 4,568 German...

Many start-ups chose to compete with incumbent firms using one of two generic strategies: cost leadership or differentiation. Our study demonstrates how this choice depends on whether the start-up was founded out of necessity. Our results, based on a representative data set of 4,568 German...

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms. Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firm characteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explaining young firms'...

We investigate the interdependence of debt financing and R&D activities of young firms. Using micro-level data of the KfW/ZEW Start-up Panel, our estimation results show that firm characteristics are more important than personal characteristics of the founders for explaining young firms'...

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...

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...

This study presents the results of a meta-analysis of the financial performance of family firms. Drawing on a sample of 380 studies, we find that family firms show an economically weak, albeit statistically significant, superior performance compared to non-family firms. Furthermore, we find...

Bayesian methods constitute an alternative to null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). This article briefly reviews the concept of Bayesian methods, describes their differences from NHST, and discusses the potential of Bayesian methods to advance family business research and practice. We...

We employ agency theory to argue that the effects of family (and founder) ownership versus management will be quite different: the former is expected to contribute positively to performance, the latter is argued to erode performance. Previous studies, due to problems of multicollinearity have...