This paper studies local social capital in two Swedish rural districts. It concentrates on the relations between local political/public bodies and local development groups. The political bodies have acted somewhat differently towards local development initiatives in the two districts. This has...

Research on the impact of social capital on economic growth has mainly focused on civil society’s social capital. The social capital related to enterprises has received little attention. This paper aims at developing a method for measuring enterprises’ investments in social capital. We...

The growing role of knowledge as the base of the economy has meant growing expectations of universities all over the world to function as engines for regional growth. The independent role of universities is slowly being replaced by governmental policies for human capital formation, knowledge...

As in other countries, urbanization and industrialization in Sweden was two sides of the same coin. To a large extent, the Swedish urbanization took place at a low level with the emergence of many small towns. The last decades, a redistribution of the urban population to bigger cities has...

By entrepreneurial combinations of voluntary resources, project means from public and private sources, commissions on contracts and other ways of financing, the youth house "Fryshuset", with a great number of social activities for primarily young people in Stockholm, Sweden, has been able to...

Entrepreneurship is often viewed in a simplified way and defined as the starting of new firms. There are obvious advantages in using this simplified definition, not least regarding measurement, but with such a definition there is also a great risk in missing important aspects of entrepreneurship...

Policies aiming at promoting entrepreneurship are in general formed on national levels, without any consideration to differences between urban and rural areas. Usually cities are provided with better and more modern infrastructure; cities have better supply of physical, financial and human...