The purpose of this paper is to test the possible catalysing role of in-house R&D in fostering the complementarity of innovative inputs on a sample of 3045 manufacturing firms drawn from the third Italian Community Innovation Survey (1998-2000). The interactions between four different sources of...

An important literature has made a fundamental link between corporate governanceand corporate strategy. According to agency theory, assigning managersstock options aligns their interests with the interests of the owners of the firm.This paper suggests that this may not apply in the context of...

Policy interest since the early 1980s has focused in different ways on the crea-tion of a large, productive, taxable economy - in which entrepreneurship plays a role for employment, income growth and innovation. The current understanding of various forms of entrepreneurship remains incomplete,...

Demographic change will be one of the major challenges for economic policy in the developed world in the next decades. In this article, we analyze the relationship between age structure and the number of startups. We argue that an individual's decision to start a business is determined by his or...

We present a model that explains how a cluster moves through a life cycle and why this movement differs from the industry life cycle. The model is based on three key processes: the changing heterogeneity in the cluster describes the movement of the cluster through the life cycle; the geographical...

While considerable concern has emerged about the impact of religion oneconomic development, little is actually known about how religion impacts thedecision making of individuals. This paper examines the influence of religion onthe decision for people to become an entrepreneur. Based on a...

This paper examines to what extent recent empirical evidence can collectively and systematically substantiate the claim that entrepreneurship has important economic value. Hence, a systematic review is provided that answers the question: What is the contribution of entrepreneurs to the economy...

This paper explores the potential of microfinance in post-conflict economies, and speci-fically examines policy considerations for the case of Iraq. It presents important condi-tions of the post-conflict economy, and examines three critical requirements for suc-cessful microfinance operations,...

We explore if the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship, applied to FDI, provides at least a partial explanation for the greater emergence of recent knowledge-based entrepreneurship in Ireland compared with Wales. In order to examine how FDI and entrepreneurship policy in these two...

A new model of economic growth introduces the knowledge filter between new knowledge and economically useful knowledge. It identifies both new ventures and incumbent firms as the mechanisms that penetrate the knowledge filter. Recent empirical work has shown that new firms are more proficient at...