There has been vast interest in the distribution of city sizes in an economy, but this research has largely neglected that cities also diff er along another fundamental dimension: age. Using novel data on the foundation dates of almost 8,000 American cities, we fi nd that older cities in the US...

Family business participation in economic activities has been a common phenomenon since pre-industrial societies, and its importance has evolved throughout time and across spatial contexts. These factors have often been neglected in family business and regional studies. Taking this research gap...

This chapter searches for common fertile ground between the disciplines of family business studies and regional studies. Most existing studies linking both disciplines are fragmented and dispersed, thereby obstructing a systematic assessment of the cross fertilisation of knowledge. Based on...

By connecting the two evolving discourses on family firms in spatial contexts and corporate spatial responsibilities, this chapter introduces a unique perspective on family firm-driven urban and regional engagement. This chapter summarizes selected existing case studies of family firm-driven...

There is both a practical and a scholarly need for the thorough examination of the nexus between family firms and economic spaces (e.g. locations, places, landscapes). The authors address this nexus through two approaches. First, they explore economic spaces’ effect on family firms by...

The innovation process is characterized by interactive learning involving multiple entities (Lundvall 1988). The flow and exchange of information and knowledge spurs R&D activities and innovation enhancing regions’ economic growth and competitiveness. Being aware of this process, government...

The management of urban and rural areas has always consisted of a mixture of state, market and civil society actors. In times of increased liberalization, deregulation and privatization of many former state-dominated tasks, limited institutional capabilities of smaller communities, a lack of...

In this paper we take a detailed look at the sectoral anatomy of regional growth in German regions over the period 1978-2008. In the aggregate, the German economy is characterized by a secular decline of the manufacturing sector and a rise of the modern service economy. This trend of structural...