Presentations on entrepreneurship and wage growth in the course of working life

The GfR Summer Conference 2025 took place on June 26 and 27, 2025, at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld. Jan Cornelius Peters presented joint work with Annekatrin Niebuhr and Duncan Roth. They investigate the extent to which workers in rural and urban regions accumulate experience over the course of their working lives and how this affects the development of individual remuneration. Building on a study they published in 2024, their current analysis highlights the role of different occupational, sectoral and firm structures in explaining regional differences in individual wage growth with increasing work experience. In addition, they illustrate changes in the context of the structural transformation over the last 50 years.

Together with Christian Bergholz, Petrik Runst is exploring whether previous self-employment can foster entrepreneurial experience—and whether this experience, in turn, affects the survival of newly founded businesses. Initial empirical findings suggest that individuals who are frequently self-employed (“serial entrepreneurs”) tend to exhibit different personality traits compared to one-time founders. Surprisingly, the average duration of self-employment is lower for serial entrepreneurs than for one-time founders—possibly due to these personality differences.

Contact: Dr. Petrik Runst