This paper investigates regional sources of entrepreneurial opportunities of knowledge-intensive start-up activity. Thereby it is investigated whether it makes a difference if the knowledge-intensive sector is a newly emerging industry compared to the case where its location across space could...

Previous research suggests that entrepreneurs value autonomy more than non-entrepreneurs do across countries and institutional contexts. However, most evidence exists for contexts with more or less entrepreneurship-facilitating and stable institutional frame-work conditions while we do not know...

The paper focuses on regional determinants of entrepreneurship. It basically asks the question which effect different regional characteristics have on new business formation rates in an economy where the level of start-up activity is more or less "zero" across regions since entrepreneurship is...

The main aim of this paper is to enhance our knowledge of the role of regional entrepreneurial culture that is important to foster economic growth. The paper sheds light on regional differences of self-employment and start-up activities in a socialist and post-socialist economy, which is to the...

The present paper sheds light on how growth of young firms is affected by expansive strategies and the socioeconomic heritage of their main actors. "Socioeconomic heritage" has to do with socialization, prior socioeconomic circumstances, and regional growth conditions; the term is elaborated...

There is a successful and growing number of studies published in top-economics journals that exploit the division and re-unification of Germany as a natural experiment for analysing the effects of political regimes on economic behaviour. One strand of the literature shows that socialism shaped...

Studies for established market economies such as West Germany (Fritsch and Mueller, 2007), and Sweden (Andersson and Koster, 2011) have shown that regional start-up rates tend to show a relatively high level of persistence and path dependency over periods of 10-15 years. One main reason for this...

This paper investigates the persistence of entrepreneurship in the region of Kaliningrad between 1925 and 2010. During this time period the area experienced a number of extremely disruptive shocks including; devastation caused by World War II, a nearly complete replacement of the native German...

Persistence of entrepreneurship over longer periods of time could indicate a culture of entrepreneurship among the local population that may be an important factor for regional development, but does persistence of economic activity require cultural transmission? We exploit the diverse historical...

This paper analyzes the role of different types of institutions, such as entrepreneurship- facilitating entry conditions, labor market regulations, quality of government, and perception of corruption for individual well-being among self-employed and paid employed individuals. Well-being is...