TY - RPRT A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Maliranta, Mika A1 - Nippala, Veera A1 - Nurmi, Satu T1 - Does gender of firm ownership matter? BT - Female entrepreneurs and the gender pay gap T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We examine how the gender of business-owners is related to the wages paid to female relative to male employees working in their firms. Using Finnish register data and employing firm fixed effects, we find that the gender pay gap is – starting from a gender pay gap of 11 to 12 percent - two to three percentage-points lower for hourly wages in female-owned firms than in male-owned firms. Results are robust to how the wage is measured, as well as to various further robustness checks. More importantly, we find substantial differences between industries. While, for instance, in the manufacturing sector, the gender of the owner plays no role for the gender pay gap, in several service sector industries, like ICT or business services, no or a negligible gender pay gap can be found, but only when firms are led by female business owners. Businesses in male ownership maintain a gender pay gap of around 10 percent also in the latter industries. With increasing firm size, the influence of the gender of the owner, however, fades. In large firms, it seems that others – firm managers – determine wages and no differences in the pay gap are observed between male- and female-owned firms. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 76 KW - entrepreneurship KW - gender pay gap KW - discrimination KW - linked employer-employee data Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-636194 SN - 2628-653X IS - 76 SP - 1 EP - 39 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Herrmann, Benedikt A1 - Kritikos, Alexander T1 - Growing out of the crisis BT - hidden assets to Greece's transition to an innovation economy T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Greece’s currently planned institutional reforms will help to get the country going with limited economic growth. With an economy based primarily on tourism, trade, and agriculture, Greece lacks an established competitive industry and an innovation-friendly environment, resulting in a low export ratio given the small size of the country and its long-time EU-membership. Instead, Greece exports only its nation's talent, with low returns. To become prosperous, the country must better capitalize on its Eurozone membership and add innovative sectors to its economic structure. Given Greece's hidden assets, such as the attractiveness of the country, a small number of strong research centers and an impressive diaspora in research, finance and business, we envision a Greek “Silicon Valley” and propose a ten point policy plan to achieve that goal. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 896 KW - innovation KW - Greece KW - growth strategy KW - entrepreneurship KW - innovation systems KW - regulatory environment Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-434805 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 896 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fritsch, Michael A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Sorgner, Alina T1 - Why did self-employment increase so strongly in Germany? JF - Entrepreneurship and regional development N2 - Germany experienced a unique rise in the level of self-employment in the first two decades following unification. Applying the nonlinear Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique, we find that the main factors driving these changes in the overall level of self-employment are demographic developments, the shift towards service sector employment and a larger share of population holding a tertiary degree. While these factors explain most of the development in self-employment with employees and the overall level of self-employment in West Germany, their explanatory power is much lower for the stronger increase in solo self-employment and in self-employment in former socialist East Germany. KW - self-employment KW - nonlinear Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique KW - entrepreneurship KW - Germany KW - L26 KW - D22 Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/08985626.2015.1048310 SN - 0898-5626 SN - 1464-5114 VL - 27 IS - 5-6 SP - 307 EP - 333 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Estrin, Saul A1 - Khavul, Susanna A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Löher, Jonas T1 - Access to digital finance BT - equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding in terms of the relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised per pitch. We examine heterogeneity in the average amount raised per pitch that is associated with differences across three countries and seven platforms. Using a novel dataset of successful fundraising on the most prominent platforms in the UK, Germany, and the USA, we find the underlying relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised for entrepreneurs is loglinear, with a coefficient less than one and concave to the origin. We identify significant variation in the average amount invested in each pitch across countries and platforms. Our findings have implications for market actors as well as regulators who set competitive frameworks. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 72 KW - equity crowdfunding KW - soft information KW - entrepreneurship KW - finance KW - financial access and inclusion Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623261 SN - 2628-653X IS - 72 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - The influence of start-up motivation on entrepreneurial performance JF - Small business economics N2 - Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis, we examine a broad range of business outcomes including survival and income, as well as job creation, and expansion and innovation activities for up to 40 months after business formation. Using the self-determination theory as conceptual background, we aggregate the start-up motives into a continuous motivational index. We show – based on a unique dataset of German start-ups from unemployment and non-unemployment – that the later business performance is better, the higher they score on this index. Effects are particularly strong for growth-oriented outcomes like innovation and expansion activities. In a next step, we examine three underlying motivational categories that we term opportunity, career ambition, and necessity. We show that individuals driven by opportunity motives perform better in terms of innovation and business expansion activities, while career ambition is positively associated with survival, income, and the probability of hiring employees. All effects are robust to the inclusion of a large battery of covariates that are proven to be important determinants of entrepreneurial performance. KW - entrepreneurship KW - push and pull theories KW - start-up motivation KW - survival KW - job creation KW - firm growth KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00722-6 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 VL - 61 SP - 869 EP - 889 PB - Springer Science+Business Media CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Rodríguez, Daniel A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - Self-efficacy and entrepreneurial performance of start-ups JF - Small business economics N2 - Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and investigate, based on a representative sample of 1,405 German business founders, how the personality characteristic of generalized self-efficacy influences start-up performance as measured by a broad set of business outcomes up to 19 months after business creation. Outcomes include start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, as well as growth-oriented outcomes such as job creation and innovation. We find statistically significant and economically important positive effects of high scores of self-efficacy on start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, which become even stronger when focusing on the growth-oriented outcome of innovation. Furthermore, we observe that generalized self-efficacy is similarly distributed between female and male business founders, with effects being partly stronger for female entrepreneurs. Our findings are important for policy instruments that are meant to support firm growth by facilitating the design of more target-oriented offers for training, coaching, and entrepreneurial incubators. KW - entrepreneurship KW - firm performance KW - general self-efficacy KW - survival KW - job creation KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-022-00728-0 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 PB - Springer Science CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Rodriguez, Daniel A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Performance of Start-Ups T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and investigate, based on a representative sample of 1,405 German business founders, how the personality characteristic of generalized self-efficacy influences start-up performance as measured by a broad set of business outcomes up to 19 months after business creation. Outcomes include start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, as well as growth-oriented outcomes such as job creation and innovation. We find statistically significant and economically important positive effects of high scores of self-efficacy on start-up survival and entrepreneurial income, which become even stronger when focusing on the growth-oriented outcome of innovation. Furthermore, we observe that generalized self-efficacy is similarly distributed between female and male business founders, with effects being partly stronger for female entrepreneurs. Our findings are important for policy instruments that are meant to support firm growth by facilitating the design of more target-oriented offers for training, coaching, and entrepreneurial incubators. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 61 KW - entrepreneurship KW - firm performance KW - general self-efficacy KW - survival KW - job creation KW - innovation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-572527 SN - 2628-653X IS - 61 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Fossen, Frank M. A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Wetter, Miriam T1 - The Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Not just a Matter of Personality JF - CESifo economic studies : a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and Ifo Institute for Economic Research N2 - Why do entrepreneurship rates differ so markedly by gender? Using data from a large representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent personality traits, human capital, and the employment history influence the start-up decision and can explain the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Applying a decomposition analysis, we observe that the higher risk aversion among women explains a large share of the entrepreneurial gender gap. We also find an education effect contributing to the gender difference. In contrast, the Big Five model and the current employment state have effects in the opposite direction, meaning that the gender gap in entrepreneurial entry would be even larger if women had the same scores and the same employment status as men. (JEL codes: L26, J16, D81, J24, M13). KW - entrepreneurship KW - gender gap KW - personality KW - decomposition analysis Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/cesifo/ifu023 SN - 1610-241X SN - 1612-7501 VL - 61 IS - 1 SP - 202 EP - 238 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Fossen, Frank M. A1 - Kritikos, Alexander T1 - What Makes an Employer? T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - As the policy debate on entrepreneurship increasingly centers on firm growth in terms of job creation, it is important to better understand which variables influence the first hiring decision and which ones influence the subsequent survival as an employer. Using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze what role individual characteristics of entrepreneurs play in sustainable job creation. While human and social capital variables positively influence the hiring decision and the survival as an employer in the same direction, we show that none of the personality traits affect the two outcomes in the same way. Some traits are only relevant for survival as an employer but do not influence the hiring decision, other traits even unfold a revolving door effect, in the sense that employers tend to fail due to the same characteristics that positively influenced their hiring decision. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 13 KW - employer KW - entrepreneurship KW - business venturing KW - firm growth KW - employment growth KW - personality Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-437360 SN - 2628-653X IS - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bertschek, Irene A1 - Block, Joern A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Stiel, Caroline T1 - German financial state aid during Covid-19 pandemic BT - higher impact among digitalized self-employed JF - Entrepreneurship & regional development N2 - In response to strong revenue and income losses facing a large share of self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency-aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the confidence to survive the crisis. We investigate how the digitalization level of self-employed individuals influences the program’s effectiveness. Employing propensity score matching, we find that the emergency-aid program had only moderately positive effects on the confidence of self-employed to survive the crisis. However, self-employed whose businesses were highly digitalized, benefitted much more from the state aid than those whose businesses were less digitalized. This only holds true for those self-employed, who started the digitalization processes already before the crisis. Taking a regional perspective, we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the regional broadband infrastructure matters in the sense that it increases the effectiveness of the emergency-aid program. Our findings show the interplay between governmental support programs, the digitalization levels of entrepreneurs, and the regional digital infrastructure. The study helps public policy to improve the impact of crisis-related policy instruments, ultimately increasing the resilience of small firms in times of crises. KW - self-employment KW - emergency-aid KW - treatment effects KW - COVID-19 KW - entrepreneurship KW - digitalization KW - resilience Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/08985626.2023.2196267 SN - 0898-5626 SN - 1464-5114 VL - 36 IS - 1-2 SP - 76 EP - 97 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - London ER -