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...

This book explores the relationship between families, firms, and regions and the extent to which these relationships contribute to regional economic and social development. Although family business participation in economic activities has been a common phenomenon since pre-industrial societies,...

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...

Municipal break-ups are an understudied phenomenon despite the fact that such territorial reforms regularly take place across the globe. This paper estimates how seven voluntary splits of Swedish municipalities affected municipal current costs. To predict what would have happened had the...

Which of Germanys regions is the most attractive? Where is it best to live and work - on objective grounds? These questions are summed up in the concept “quality of life”. This paper uses recent research projects that determine this parameter to examine the spatial distribution of quality of...

The thesis consists of an introductory part and three self-contained papers. <p> Paper [I] studies the determinants of the differences in expenditure on services for functionally impaired individuals among municipalities in Sweden. A spatial autoregressive model is used in order to test whether the...</p>

A question frequently posed in Russia amid the economic and social anarchy of the post socialist period is whether it might not be better off if it followed the Chinese model of transition. This latter might be described in broad terms as a very slow liberalisation of the political system with a...

This paper studies the social desirability of agglomeration and the efficiency arguments for policy intervention in a simple, analytically solvable ‘new economic geography’ model with two trade integrating regions. The location pattern emerging as market equilibrium is...

The study analyzes and evaluates the changes and differences in the following concrete directions in the development of the municipalities: financial state, social development, employment and unemployment, ecological state. Comparisons with previous periods are made. Analyzed and evaluated is...

The study presents results from a research on the level of development of the municipalities in the country in the period 1996 – 1998 and on this base is made an evaluation of the differences between them. Average transformed integral estimations are built, on which bases is made arranging of...