Publikationen des Vorstandsbereichs

Emergency Aid for Self-Employed in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Flash in the Pan?

The self-employed are among those facing the highest probability of strong income losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments in many countries introduced support programs to support the self-employed, including the German federal government, which approved a €50bn emergency aid program at the end of March 2020 offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those facing substantial revenue ...

A Lasting Crisis Affects R&D Decisions of Smaller Firms: The Greek Experience

We use the prolonged Greek crisis as a case study to understand how a lasting economic shock affects the innovation strategies of firms in economies with moderate innovation activities. Adopting the 3-stage CDM model, we explore the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity for different size groups of Greek manufacturing firms during the prolonged crisis. At the first stage, we find that the ...

Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these ...

Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses

The existential threat to small businesses, based on their crucial role in the economy, is behind the plethora of scholarly studies in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining the 14 contributions of the special issue on the "Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses," the paper comprises four parts: a systematic review of the literature on the ...

The Productivity Puzzle in Business Services

In Germany, the productivity of professional services, a sector dominated by micro and small firms, declined by 40 percent between 1995 and 2014. This productivity decline also holds true for professional services in other European countries. Using a German firm-level dataset of 700,000 observations between 2003 and 2017, we analyze this largely uncovered phenomenon among professional services, the ...

The Productivity Puzzle in Business Services

In Germany, the productivity of professional services, a sector dominated by micro and small firms, declined by 40 percent between 1995 and 2014. This productivity decline also holds true for professional services in other European countries. Using a German firm-level dataset of 700,000 observations between 2003 and 2017, we analyze this largely uncovered phenomenon among professional services, the ...

Wie die (Frei-)Zeit vergeht: Ergebnisbericht ; Version: 11.02.2021

Während der Corona-Pandemie halten mehr Menschen als zuvor ihre Mitmenschen für vertrauenswürdig, fair und hilfsbereit – Ost- und Westdeutsche unterscheiden sich dabei aber

COVID-19: a Crisis of the Female Self-Employed

We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the governmentmandated measures to contain its spread, affect the self-employed – particularly women – in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face ...

COVID-19: a Crisis of the Female Self-Employed

We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the governmentmandated measures to contain its spread, affect the self-employed – particularly women – in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face ...