Identifying the impact of local firm concentration on individual firm performance is likely to produce a selection bias related to the positive effects of local concentration if agglomeration economies and natural advantages coincide. We overcome this problem by exploiting exogenous variation...

We test whether new firms locate close to incumbent firms of the same industry. Tendencies to coagglomerate may explain the general wisdom that industry location is highly persistent over time. We perform separate analysis for East and West Germany which enables us to study two integrated areas...

We incorporate the concept of social identity into entrepreneurship and analyze the determinants of having entrepreneurial intentions. We argue that an entrepreneurial identity results from an individual’s socialization. This could be parental influence but, as argued in this paper, also peer...

We study the effect of cultural ties on economic exchange using a novel measure for cultural identity: dialects. We evaluate linguistic micro-data from a unique language survey conducted between 1879 and 1888 in about 45,000 German schools. The recorded geography of dialects comprehensively...

Audretsch D. B., Falck O., Feldman M. P. and Heblich S. Local entrepreneurship in context, Regional Studies. This paper posits that regions provide locational factors which determine the industry structure and with it entrepreneurial opportunities whose exploitation influences regional dynamics....

Empirical studies based on individual data have found an inverse U-shaped relationship between age and the decision to start a business. Other studies have shown that becoming an entrepreneur is a regional event, with potential entrepreneurs benefiting from their local networks. This article...

We ask whether and what kind of unique factors influence the innovativeness of firms in clusters across geographic regions and industrial sectors. We provide evidence for the driving forces of firm innovativeness in different cluster types. Distinguishing between hierarchical clusters of mature...

This paper combines the empirical finding of a functional specialization of cities with regional dynamics.We distinguish between cities dominated by headquarters and service firms (urban agglomerations), those with large stand-alone production plants in one sector (industrial agglomerations),...

Globalization has had an enormous impact on traditional industrial structures. It almost seems that everything is everywhere the same. And yet, in reality, some regions in a single industrialized country enjoy rapid economic growth while others are downsizing or stagnating. Thus there must be...