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From 2014 on, KfW/ZEW's Start-Up Panel has been continued as IAB/ZEW Start-Up Panel.

In order to create appropriate business conditions for firm founders, an empirically founded, broad and continuously updated knowledge is necessary. With the KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel an instrument was designed which meets these requirements. The KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel originates from a cooperation of the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, the KfW Bankengruppe (KfW banking group) and the credit rating agency Creditreform. It studies the development of start-ups for several years and provides a wide range of firm-specific information. Each year approximately 6,000 firms are interviewed telephonically. The basis of the annual survey constitutes a random sample-stratified by sector and foundation year-of the Mannheim Enterprise Panel (Mannheimer Unternehmenspanel, MUP) which is created and maintained at ZEW in cooperation with Creditreform. The stratification of the sample enables sector-specific analyses for the small but economically important group of high-tech start-ups as well as for recently founded firms from the non-technology-intensive sectors. The KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel, which is surveyed and analysed annually, shall improve the information basis for the foundation funding and stimulate the foundation research in Germany.

The Zentrum für Evaluation and Methoden (ZEM) (Centre for Evaluation and Methods (ZEM) of the University of Bonn) is entrusted to carry out the annual interviews of the KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel.