The influence of labour market institutions on busi-ness survival in European countries: what affects the survival of new businesses?

Abstract: Abstract: New ventures’ survival chances are becoming increasingly lower threatening economic growth and the innovation capability of each country. Research on business survival has focussed on many internal and structural drivers, however, there is a large gap regarding external influences, especially the influence of labour market institutions. This thesis fills the gap by extract-ing and analysing certain labour market regulations set up by national govern-ments with the help of the varieties of capitalism approach. Subsequently, Eu-ropean countries are clustered according to this approach in order to have a macroeconomic comparison of business survival patterns depending on gov-ernmental influence in the labour market. Moreover, the thesis uses very recent survival data from Eurostat as well as labour market data from other official sources in a multivariate regression to investigate correlations between labour market institutions and survival rates. The results give insights on the influence certain regularities, created by policy makers, have on business longevity. Fur-thermore, the thesis suggests several starting points for further research in this fairly untouched area.