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In this paper, I analyse how the survival of new firms is affected by the average ability level in the founding team, the team size, team members' homogeneity with respect to ability, and team members' heterogeneity with respect to education. As a theoretical basis, I apply the O-ring theory (Kremer (1993)). Using a rich employer-employee data set on the whole population of Danish firms founded in 1998, I find that the average ability level in a team and the team size have positive effects on firm survival. Having a team at all is the most crucial factor for the probability of survival of young firms. The degree of homogeneity with respect to ability and the degree of heterogeneity with respect to educations have no effect on the survival probability.

In this paper, I analyse how the survival of new firms is affected by the average ability level in the founding team, the team size, team members' homogeneity with respect to ability, and team members' heterogeneity with respect to education. As a theoretical basis, I apply the O-ring theory (Kremer (1993)). Using a rich employer-employee data set on the whole population of Danish firms founded in 1998, I find that the average ability level in a team and the team size have positive effects on firm survival. Having a team at all is the most crucial factor for the probability of survival of young firms. The degree of homogeneity with respect to ability and the degree of heterogeneity with respect to educations have no effect on the survival probability.

Academic spin-offs are one way in which employability of university graduates is reflected. Using the ZEW spinoff-survey, this paper studies empirically the impact of human capital on the success of academic spinoffs founding in knowledge and technology intensive sectors. The focus is thereby on the composition of human capital which is described according to whether or not the founders have studied several subjects and whether or not they all come from the same research establishment. Additionally the impact of having founded as a team is analyzed. Success is measured by employment growth. The findings suggest that it is advantageous to found within a team, but that the human capital composition both for single entrepreneurs and team foundations is rather irrelevant.

Third-party presence is considered a potential threat to the quality of sensitive information gathered in face-to-face interviews. Issues arising from interference and reduced privacy due to bystander presence appear particularly pressing in child surveys: Parental presence is quite common and likely more pervasive as compared to other interviewee-bystander constellations. Focusing on surveys designed to capture multiple perspectives on the same issues, a key question is whether child interviews - in addition to parent information - can provide an independent opinion if parents are present during the interview. Using longitudinal multi-actor data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), the present study evaluates the impact of parental presence on child-parent discrepancies in survey reports on children's problem behaviors and difficulties in the parent-child relationship. The longitudinal analysis of child-parent dyads allows for a more extensive consideration of selection processes of parental presence as compared to cross-sectional approaches. While descriptive results suggest that parent and child reports are more similar when parents are present, fixed-effects regression analyses do not find any effects of changes in parental presence on reporting discrepancies within child-parent dyads.

Issues associated with collecting data on sensitive topics are widely studied in survey research. Respondents' reactions to sensitive questions have rarely been addressed from a longitudinal perspective, however, despite panel surveys representing a fundamental data source for social research. This article evaluates whether respondents' acceptance of sensitive questions increases with repeated interviewing in a panel survey. Drawing on data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), we apply fixed-effects regression models to assess within-respondent changes in refusal to items on sexuality and fertility. The analysis reveals that refusal attenuates for some, but not all questions under study and increases for other items over time, with patterns varying across age groups. We conclude that a general beneficial effect of panel experience on the refusal to answer questions regarding sexuality and fertility does not exist. Rather, refusal patterns appear to stem from aging processes and specific life situations.