This papers has two aims. First we intend to explain empirically how the characteristics of an individual and of the region he/she lives influence the propensity of this individual to start a business. Second, we test for the ceteris paribus effect of regional characteristics, i.e. if one controls for the characteristics of the people who live there. While many studies exist which consider regional aggegrated data to explain regional start-up rates, multilevel analysis with both individual and (aggregated) regional data is rarely used so far among economic geographers and regional economists. Our econometric study is based on data for 12.000 persons from a representative survey of the population in eleven German planning regions, the Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor (REM). We use a version of the logit model that takes the rare events nature of becoming a nascent entrepreneur, and the regional stratification of the data, into account. We find that the propensity to step into self-employment is higher for males, for persons with at least one self-employed in the family, for those who work(ed) in a young and small firm, and for people with a larger number of fields of professional experience, while it is lower for older people, and for people who consider the fear of failure a reason not to start their own business. These findings are in line with our theoretical priors. As regards the regional variables, no stable relationship with the individual propensity to step into self-employment turns up. Reasons for this result, and consequences for an economic geography perspective of entrepreneurship research, are discussed in the final section of the paper.