According to a widespread view, Germany's unemployment crisis is caused by rigid labour markets, low profitability and increasing international competition. We argue that this view does not provide a convincing explanation for the dramatic rise in Germany's unemployment rate since 1989, first...

This paper contributes to the policy-relevant question whether self-employment is a way out of (long-term) unemployment. We estimate the relationship between the entry rate into self-employment and previous (long-term) unemployment on the basis of pseudo-panel data for Germany in the period...