IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jrp/jrpwrp/2009-044.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Shadows of the Past - How Implicit Institutions Influence Entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Bauernschuster

    (University of Jena)

  • Oliver Falck

    (Ifo Institute for Economic Research)

  • Robert Gold

    (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

  • Stephan Heblich

    (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of implicit institutions on the decision to become an entrepreneur. Implicit institutions are here defined as mindsets that have developed as the result of norms and traditions and we expect they will have an influence on risk attitudes and opportunity recognition. We conduct a natural experiment based on Germany's recent history and compare individuals born and raised in the former socialist East Germany (GDR) with their West Germany (FRG) counterparts. Our analysis confirms the expected difference in values between individuals from East and West Germany and also shows that these differences influence the probability of being self-employed. In the process of our analysis, we also sketch the ongoing economical transition process in East Germany, which severely disturbs a proper analysis of the institutional differences from a macro-perspective.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Bauernschuster & Oliver Falck & Robert Gold & Stephan Heblich, 2009. "The Shadows of the Past - How Implicit Institutions Influence Entrepreneurship," Jena Economics Research Papers 2009-044, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    • Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2009/wp_2009_044.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Fritsch & Alina Rusakova, 2012. "Self-Employment after Socialism: Intergenerational Links, Entrepreneurial Values, and Human Capital," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 456, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Stefan Bauernschuster & Helmut Rainer, 2012. "Political regimes and the family: how sex-role attitudes continue to differ in reunified Germany," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 5-27, January.
    3. Bijedić, Teita & Haase, Inga & Müller, Anna, 2018. "Regionale Gründungsumfelder am Beispiel ausgewählter Hot-Spots," IfM-Materialien 265, Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IfM) Bonn.
    4. Michael Fritsch & Elisabeth Bublitz & Alina Sorgner & Michael Wyrwich, 2014. "How much of a socialist legacy? The re-emergence of entrepreneurship in the East German transformation to a market economy," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 427-446, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Implicit Institutions; Entrepreneurship; Socialism; Capitalism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • P39 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-044. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Markus Pasche (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jenecon.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.