Overview and Introduction

Abstract

During the last two decades, which were characterised by a high rate of unemployment, new instruments of active labour market policy have become popular. Beside the classical programmes like vocational training or re-education, many industrialised countries introduced programmes to promote the transition from unemployment to self-employment (see Franz, 2003 for an overview on trends in, and causes of unemployment and on active labour market programmes). In the view of most politicians, a higher rate of self-employment is promising innovation and growth for the economy. Therefore, politics try to establish a “new culture” of self-employment to open up new sources of employment which in turn shall help to reduce unemployment. The aim is to reduce unemployment directly by shifting people out of an unemployed status into self-employment as well as indirectly by creating further jobs in the newly-founded firms.