Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the...

When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

Why do entrepreneurship rates differ so markedly by gender? Using data from a large, representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent personality traits, human capital, and the employment history influence the start-up decision and can explain the gender gap in...

Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis,...

Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis,...

Risk attitudes have an impact on not only the decision to become an entrepreneur but also the survival and failure rates of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become an entrepreneur,...

Does personality matter? Is an individual who is open to experience more or less likely to become an entrepreneur? Is it better to score low or high in agreeableness for surviving as an entrepreneur? To the extent that personality captures one part of entrepreneurial abilities, which are usually...