How Much of a Socialist Legacy? The Reemergence of Entrepreneurship in the East German Transformation to a Market Economy

Michael Fritsch, Elisabeth Sattler-Bublitz, Alina Rusakova () and Michael Wyrwich
Additional contact information
Alina Rusakova: School of Economics and Business Administration, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alina Sorgner

No 2012-042, Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena

Abstract: The 40 years of socialist regime in East Germany were characterized by a massive anti-entrepreneurship policy. We investigate the reemergence of entrepreneurship in East Germany during its transformation to a market economy following the collapse of the East German state in 1989. It took about 15 years until self-employment levels in East Germany reached those of West Germany. Despite this catch up, we find a number of peculiarities in East German self-employment that appear to be a continuing legacy of the socialist period. In particular, older and better-educated East Germans have a relatively low propensity for starting an own business. Moreover, East German workers tend to have a lower variety of skills than their West German counterparts, which could explain a lower propensity for start up in the early years after reunification. Despite this socialist imprint, we also find considerable continuity in the levels of self-employment in the 1920s and those after transition to a market economy, suggesting the existence of a long-lasting regional entrepreneurship culture.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; self-employment; new business formation; transformation; East Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-his, nep-sbm and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2012/wp_2012_042.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How much of a socialist legacy? The re-emergence of entrepreneurship in the East German transformation to a market economy (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2012-042

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Jena Economics Research Papers from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Markus Pasche ().