The paper uses a unique dataset comprising a population of new ventures that enter the UK market in 1998. The data comprises services as well as manufacturing industries. The central hypothesis is that new ventures are differently affected by industry competition and growth in dynamic compared...

A stylized fact of economic development is the structural transformation of countries from traditional, mainly agricultural societies to modern economies dominated by manufacturing and services. In this paper we provide an endogenous growth model to illuminate the role of entrepreneurial...

This paper reviews the literature on incubators in developed and developing countries. We show that the concept of incubators has evolved in time according to market and firm needs. Contemporary successful incubators are profit-oriented, provide a wide range of services, focus more on intangible...

Start-ups of new firms are important for economic growth. However, start-up rates differ significantly between countries and within regions of the same country. A large empirical literature studies the reasons for this and attempts to identify the regional determinants of start-ups. In contrast,...

The success of new start-up firms often depends on timing. It is valuable for the potential entrepreneur to wait for the right moment before starting a new firm. In this paper we provide a theoretical model to determine the optimal time for starting a new firm. We integrate insights from the...

This paper investigates whether a high level of new business formation in a region stimulates employment in that region. The study looks at the lag structure of these effects, using a data set covering a fairly large time span (1982-2002). The indirect supply-side effects of new firm births,...

The transition paths from plan to market have varied markedly across countries. Central and Eastern European and the Baltic countries, which opted for a fast and profound transformation of their institutions including business climates, rapidly narrowed the productivity gap with advanced...

It is now widely acknowledged that the entrepreneurial capacity in an economy is a key determinant of economic growth and productivity improvements. This paper uses survey data from the 15 EU Member States and the US to establish the effect of demographic and other variables on latent and actual...

Small start-up firms are the engine of job creation in early transition and yet little is known about the characteristics of this new sector. We seek to identify patterns of job growth in this sector in terms of niches left from central planning and ask about differences in job creation across...

Risk attitudes have an impact on not only the decision to become an entrepreneur but also the survival and failure rates of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become an entrepreneur,...