Demographic change will be one of the major challenges for economic policy in the developed world in the next decades. In this article, we analyze the relationship between age structure and the number of startups. We argue that an individual's decision to start a business is determined by his or...

New firm location decisions, relative to incumbents may be based on a choice between two types of advantages: natural advantages or those that arise from social embeddedness, the latter of which may particularly include knowledge spillovers. We analyze the relative importance of geographically...

We investigate regional differences of the effect of new business formation on employment growth in West Germany. We find an inverse 'u'-shaped relationship between the level of start-up activity and employment change. The main variables that shape the employment effects of new businesses in a...

Empirical analyses show that the employment effects of start-ups are highest in agglomerations, whereas moderately congested areas exhibit only modest effects, and weak or even no significant effects could be found in rural regions. This paper will set out to show that these discrepancies arise...