Hometown Tax Donation is designed to bolster regional economies through the provision of reciprocal gifts by local businesses, and can be regarded as a unique SME policy which is not reliant on subsidies, but instead, offers businesses the incentive to develop attractive products and yields...

This paper investigates the main determinants of economic growth in the European Union from a regional perspective. The analysis is based on a recently available dataset from the European Cluster Observatory covering 253 European regions over the period 2002-2008. In addition to the traditional...

SMEs play an important role in the development of regional innovative systems because of their potential to accept new technologies and show fast growing rates. There is an interdependence between emergence of fast growing SMEs ('gazelles') and innovative development of regions. High level of...

We investigate the impact of new business formation on regional employment. The main effects occur after a considerable time lag. Obviously, a large part of the effect is not due to job creation by the newcomers but rather is of indirect nature. This implies that a large part of the debate about...

We investigate regional differences in the level and the development of regional new business formation activity. There is a pronounced variance of start-up rates across the regions. The level of regional new firm formation is rather pathdependent so that changes are relatively small. The main...

Audretsch and Fritsch (2002) proposed two explanations for the mixed evidenceregarding the relationship between new firm formation and regional development. Firstly,they found evidence for the existence of long time lags needed before the main effects of newfirm formation on employment change...

We investigate the impact of new business formation on regional employment. The maineffects occur after a considerable time lag. Obviously, a large part of the effect is not due tojob creation by the newcomers but rather is of indirect nature. This implies that a large part ofthe debate about...