Entrepreneurship and Demografic Change
More and more people of the generation 50+ are likely to start new enterprises in the coming years. On the other hand, the share of entrepreneurs in younger, shrinking age groups might decline over-proportionally. This is the result of an empirical study in which Stephan Heblich (Max Planck Institute of Economics), Werner Bönte (University of Wuppertal) and Oliver Falck (ifo Institute) analyzed data-sets stemming from the West-German states and Berlin.
Implications of demographic change for Western societies have received a great deal of attention in recent years. Previous research has mainly focused on the stability and adjustment of social security systems. The study "The Impact on Regional Age Structure on Entrepreneurship" took a different perspective and focused on the relationship between a region's age structure and its entrepreneurial activity. Using changes in the age distribution of the population of western German regions over time, the authors found—in accordance with microlevel analyses—an inverse U-shaped relationship between the regional age structure and start-up activity in a region. Moreover, their findings suggest that the age-specific likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur changes with the size of the age cohort, pointing to the existence of age-specific peer effects. (Article)
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Jena Economic Research Papers
The Max Planck Institute of Economics and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena share the peer reviewed joint research paper series Jena Economic Research Papers (JERP). JERP provides research papers of both institutions in electronic form under www.jenecon.de.
Holger Patzelt accepted professorship
Dr. Dr. Holger Patzelt, group leader of the Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group at the Max Planck Institute of Economics, has accepted a position as a full professor for business administration (Entrepreneurship) at the Technische Universität München (TUM). He will start his new position April 1st, 2010.
Founding Activities, Innovation and Regional Development in East-Germany
From January 21-23, students from Jena and Kassel participated in a seminar on "Unternehmensgründung, Innovation und Regionalentwicklung in Ostdeutschland" here at the MPI of Economics in Jena. The seminar was part of a course on "20 Jahre Systemtransformation in Ostdeutschland" offered at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena as well as the University of Kassel. Speakers from industry, research, and policy discussed topics revolving around the transformation of the East German economy after 1989 and the repercussions of these processes we still face today. There also was an excursion to OptoNet Jena at the Beutenberg campus and to POG Precision Optics Gera.
Newspaper article
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