"This paper explores how different levels of regional concentration and specialisation affect the long-term growth of young firms. The sample consists of knowledge-intensive and non-knowledge-intensive western German manufacturing firms which were set-up in 1992 and managed to survive 11 years....

"Recent theoretical research deals with economic costs and benefits of cultural diversity related to immigration. However, empirical evidence regarding the impact of cultural diversity on economic performance is still scarce. This paper investigates the significance of cultural diversity of the...

"This paper analyses extensively the effects of inter-regional mobility on the earnings of skilled workers. We interact returns to inter-regional migration with employer changes to separate the two effects and find that inter-regional mobility results in positive additional returns as compared...

"This paper analyses the impact of dynamic MAR- and Jacobs-externalities on local employment growth in Germany between 1993 and 2001. In order to facilitate a comparison between the neighbouring countries we firstly replicate the study of Combes (2000) on local employment growth in France and...

"'What makes start-ups out of unemployment different?' To answer this question we formulate a theoretical sketch for start-up activity out of unemployment. Furthermore, we estimate spatial autoregressive models for the regional start-up rates out of unemployment as well as out of employment with...

"How do agglomeration effects influence the demand for labour? To answer this question, approaches on labour demand are linked with an analysis of the classic 'urbanization effect'. We use models for static and for dynamic labour demand to find out, whether agglomerations develop faster or...

"The results for labour demand shocks at the place of residence for German Federal States and districts according to the model of regional adjustment developed by Blanchard/Katz (1992) are in line with other studies in this field. They suggest that adjustment to region-specific shocks in the...

"In dem Beitrag werden die Auswirkungen sektoraler, regionaler sowie betrieblicher Determinanten auf das Scheitern junger Betriebe mit Hilfe eines ökonometrischen Überlebensdauer-Ansatzes analysiert. Dabei findet ein accelerated failure time model mit zugrunde liegender log-logistischer...

"This paper focuses on the question of whether improving the competence of new business founders by means of coaching and training programs enhances the duration of self-employment. In our analysis we focus on support activities that are provided in addition to a financial subsidy and which...

"The vocational qualification in Germany is crucial for a successful participation in the labour market. Persons without a vocational certification carry a clearly higher risk to become jobless and they have problems to gain a sustained foothold in the labour market. In contrast, at the upper...