"Entrepreneurship in Japan since the Bubble Burst: a dynamic study of factors determining self-employment using the rule-based approach"  

This research aims at investigating the evolution of determinants of firm formation in Japan in the course of the last 15 years. So far, many studies have tried to explain the extremely low Japanese firm formation ratio using cross-sectional data only (cp. Ohe and Ohe 1996, Harada 2002). Adding a dynamic perspective by using longitudinal data both creates new insights into current state of affairs and allows for more targeted predictions of future developments.

Building on recent theoretical advances in Evolutionary Economics, namely the rule-based analytical approach as introduced by Dopfer (Dopfer 2007), it first sets out to develop a theoretical frame embracing relevant factors from economics and beyond ranging from sociology to business, psychology and others. Conceiving of those factors as 'rules' and of their relative relevance in terms of 'rule populations', enables to trace their development in time and to do so consistently in a quantitative way.

While the first part is devoted to developing a comprehensive theoretical framework on the grounds of Dopfer/Potts' general foundations, the second part proceeds to examine the need for quantitative methods and to what extent this need can be satisfied by existing standard methods. The latter question will be particularly challenging as the analytical phenomena conceptualized in Dopfer/Potts so far have rarely been analyzed in empirical studies. To this adds the necessity to integrate data from various fields and sources into a unified model.

The third part commits to applying the theoretical framework developed beforehand to an analysis of the Japanese case. In the first place, this involves identifying suitable variables, collecting and appropriate processing of relevant data. Subsequently, recurring to the set of quantitative methods as developed in the second part, we assemble the overall model from its individual parts.