Self-Employment after Socialism: Intergenerational Links, Entrepreneurial Values, and Human Capital Volume 6 Jena Economic Research Papers 2012-06-04 2012 2007 2012-022 Entrepreneurship parental role models human capital Drawing on representative household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examine the role of an early precursor of entrepreneurial development – parental role models – for the individual decision to become self-employed in the post-unified Germany. The findings suggest that the socialist regime significantly damaged this mechanism of an intergenerational transmission of entrepreneurial attitudes among East Germans with a tertiary degree that have experienced a particularly strong ideological indoctrination. However, we find a significant and positive relationship between the presence of a parental role model and the decision to become self-employed for less-educated people. For West Germans the positive relationship holds irrespective of the level of education. jportal_jpjournal_00000016 2012-06-05T07:01:10.087Z 2012-06-05T07:00:47.698Z