The amendment to the German Trade and Crafts Code in 2004 offers a natural experiment to asses the causal effects of this reform on the probabilities of being self-employed and transition into and out of self-employment, using cross-sections (2002-2006) of German microcensus data. This study applies the difference-in-differences technique in logit models for four occupational groups. Easing the educational ...
While available evidence suggests that the events of September 11th negatively influenced the relative earnings of employees with Arab background in the US, it is not clear that they had similar effects in other countries. Our study for Germany provides evidence that the events also affected the relative earnings of Muslims outside the US. However, the results show that there was no uniform effect ...
Die Internationalisierung der Märkte und der rasante Zuwachs von technologischem Wissen sind für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) eine große Herausforderung. Um ihre Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu sichern, müssen sie auf externes Wissen zurückgreifen und Innovationsprozesse zunehmend unternehmensübergreifend organisieren. Dabei spielen die Forschungseinrichtungen eine wichtige Rolle. Sie verfügen über ...
In recent decades, many firms offered more discretion to their employees, often increasing the productivity of effort but also leaving more opportunities for shirking. These "high-performance work systems" are difficult to understand in terms of standard moral hazard models. We show experimentally that complementarities between high effort discretion, rent-sharing, screening opportunities, and competition ...
Seit 1999 unterstützt das Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit (BMWA) mit dem Programm "Förderung von innovativen Netzwerken (InnoNet)" größere Verbundprojekte zwischen öffentlichen Forschungseinrichtungen und mindestens vier kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU). Die Unternehmen kommen in diesem Programm nicht unmittelbar in den Genuss von Fördergeldern, sondern müssen sich mit Eigenleistungen ...
In this paper, we provide a comprehensive multivariate cointegration analysis of three parts of the steam coal value chain - export, transport and import prices. The analysis is based on a rich dataset of international coal prices; in particular, we combine data on steam coal prices with freight rates, covering the period December 2001 until August 2009 at weekly frequency. We then test whether the ...
Which role do individual income prospects play in the decision to be an entrepreneur rather than an employee? In a model of occupational choice, higher expected after-tax earnings attract people to self-employment, while more risky net earnings deter risk-averse individuals. In this paper I analyse the expected value and variance of income in self-employment and dependent employment empirically, accounting ...