Refine
Year of publication
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (66)
Keywords
- entrepreneurship (8)
- Entrepreneurship (6)
- Evaluation (6)
- survival (6)
- innovation (5)
- Start-up subsidies (4)
- locus of control (4)
- mental health (4)
- Employment (3)
- Innovation (3)
Institute
- Fachgruppe Volkswirtschaftslehre (34)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (22)
- Center for Economic Policy Analysis (CEPA) (17)
- Extern (5)
- Fachgruppe Betriebswirtschaftslehre (3)
- Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät (3)
- DV und Statistik Wirtschaftswissenschaften (1)
- Institut für Biochemie und Biologie (1)
- Sozialwissenschaften (1)
We analyze workers’ risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpinning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them against future losses. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to demonstrate that risk affinity is associated with more training, implying that, on average, investment risks dominate the insurance benefits of training. Crucially, this relationship is evident only for general training; there is no relationship between risk attitudes and specific training. Thus, as expected, risk preferences matter more when skills are transferable – and workers have a vested interest in training outcomes – than when they are not. Finally, we provide evidence that the insurance benefits of training are concentrated among workers with uncertain employment relationships or limited access to public insurance schemes.
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.
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.
Labor market policy tools such as training and sanctions are commonly used to help bring workers back to work. By analogy to medical treatments, the individual exposure to these tools may have side effects. We study effects on health using individual-level population registers on labor market events outcomes, drug prescriptions and sickness absence, comparing outcomes before and after exposure to training and sanctions. We find that training improves cardiovascular and mental health and lowers sickness absence. The results suggest that this is not due to improved employment prospects but rather to instantaneous features of participation such as, perhaps, the adoption of a more rigorous daily routine. Unemployment benefits sanctions cause a short-run deterioration of mental health, possibly due higher stress levels, but this tapers out quickly.
Labor market policies, such as training and sanctions, are commonly used to bring workers back to work. By analogy to medical treatments, exposure to these tools can have side effects. We study the effects on health using individual-level population registers on labor market outcomes, drug prescriptions, and sickness absence, comparing outcomes before and after exposure to training and sanctions. Training improves cardiovascular and mental health, and lowers sickness absence. This is likely to be the result of the instantaneous features of participation, such as the adoption of a more rigorous daily routine, rather than improved employment prospects. Benefits sanctions cause a short-run deterioration of mental health.
Offering unemployed individuals a subsidy to become self-employed is a widespread active labor market policy strategy. Previous studies have illustrated its high effectiveness to help participants escaping unemployment and improving their labor market prospects compared to other unemployed individuals. However, the examination of start-up subsidies from a business perspective has only received little attention to date. Using a new dataset based on a survey allows us to compare subsidized start-ups out of unemployment with regular business founders, with respect to not only personal characteristics but also business outcomes. The results indicate that previously unemployed entrepreneurs face disadvantages in variables correlated with entrepreneurial ability and access to capital. Nineteen months after start-up, the subsidized businesses experience higher survival, but lag behind regular business founders in terms of income, business growth and innovation. Moreover, we show that expected deadweight effects related to start-up subsidies occur on a (much) lower scale than usually assumed.
In 2015, Germany introduced a statutory hourly minimum wage that was not only universally binding but also set at a relatively high level. We discuss the short-run effects of this new minimum wage on a wide set of socio-economic outcomes, such as employment and working hours, earnings and wage inequality, dependent and self-employment, as well as reservation wages and satisfaction. We also discuss difficulties in the implementation of the minimum wage and the measurement of its effects related to non-compliance and suitability of data sources. Two years after the minimum wage introduction, the following conclusions can be drawn: while hourly wages increased for low-wage earners, some small negative employment effects are also identifiable. The effects on aspired goals, such as poverty and inequality reduction, have not materialized in the short run. Instead, a tendency to reduce working hours is found, which alleviates the desired positive impact on monthly income. Additionally, the level of non-compliance was substantial in the short run, thus drawing attention to problems when implementing such a wide-reaching policy.
Dealing with spam is very costly, and many organizations have tried to reduce spam-related costs by installing spam filters. Relying on modern econometric methods to reduce the selection bias of installing a spam filter, we use a unique data setting implemented at a German university to measure the costs associated with spam and the costs savings of spam filters. Our methodological framework accounts for effect heterogeneity and can be easily used to estimate the effect of other IS technologies implemented in organizations.
The majority of costs stem from the time that employees spend identifying and deleting spam, amounting to an average of approximately five minutes per employee per day. Our analysis, which accounts for selection bias, finds that the installation of a spam filter reduces these costs by roughly one third. Failing to account for the selection bias would lead to a result that suggests that installing a spam filter does not reduce working time losses.
However, cost savings only occur when the spam burden is high, indicating that spam filters do not necessarily reduce costs and are therefore no universal remedy. The analysis further shows that spam filters alone are a countermeasure against spam that exhibits only limited effectiveness because they only reduce costs by one third.
We propose a combined approach of propensity score matching with difference-in-differences methods for reducing selection biases of products being reviewed by critics. Critics' decision to review products may be driven by observable (e.g., star power) and unobservable (e.g., critics' individual preferences) factors, raising the question of reverse causality and selection biases. Our proposed approach enables to rigorously control for selection biases by observable and unobservable characteristics. We apply our methodological framework on data from the German book market and estimate the sales effect of a well-known TV critic. We identify substantial selection effects of individual critics, which result in serious underestimation of the short-term effect (up to 29 %) and the long-term effect (up to 37 %). The results emphasize the relevance of the proposed methodological framework by demonstrating that observable and unobservable factors drive selection effects.