The Entrepreneurship Compendium (Gründungs- und Selbstständigkeitsatlas)

The availability of data on business start-ups has long been a central bottleneck for entrepreneurship research in Germany. In order to eliminate this bottleneck, we provide indicators on start-up activity and self-employment in the regions of Germany. The data on start-ups is derived from the establishment history panels of German Social Insurance Statistics. It comprises information on the yearly start-up rates (number of start-ups over number of employees) activity in manufacturing, construction and private services. The employment figures used for calculating the start-up rates are from the German Federal Statistical Office. The data for West Germany is available from 1976 onwards. Information on start-ups in East Germany begins in 1993. Currently, 2020 is the most recent year for which information on start-ups from the German Social Insurance Statistics is available.

The data on the regional levels of self-employment in the period 1996 to 2019 is obtained from the Federal German Statistical Office (Arbeitskreis Erwerbstaetigenrechnung). Both datasets are in Excel format. Great thanks to Michael Wyrwich for the final preparation of data files and data description. In case of any questions mail to michael.wyrwich@uni-jena.de or m.fritsch@uni-jena.de