Crowdinvesting emerged recently as an alternative way of funding for start-up projects. Our dataset consists of 16,666 investments made at Companisto, one of the largest crowdinvesting platforms in Europe. Using cluster analysis based on individual investment decisions, we find that...

This paper examines the effects and origins of balanced skills among nascent entrepreneurs. In a first step we extend Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory to formally model performance effects of balanced skills. In a second step we investigate potential sources of balanced skills related to the...

We study the origins of entrepreneurship (culture) in the United States. For the analysis we make use of a quasi-natural experiment – the gold rush in the second part of the 19th century. We argue that the presence of gold attracted individuals with entrepreneurial personality traits. Due to a...

It has been argued that creativity is an important source of regional growth. This paper investigates the geography of people in creative occupation in Germany. The population share of the creative class as well as of bohemians and artists is relatively high in larger cities, but smaller places...

What predicts a person's venture creation success over the course of the career, such as making progress in the venture creation process and multiple successful venture creations? Applying a life span approach of human development, this study examined the effect of early entrepreneurial...

This dissertation is a compilation of papers on entrepreneurship which investigate related research questions. The unifying element of the different parts is the focus on two important concepts in entrepreneurship research, namely human capital and social capital. Briefly, the four main chapters...