The concept of competence, as it is brought into play in current research, is a potentially powerful construct for entrepreneurship education research and practice. Although the concept has been the subject of strong debate in educational research in general, critical analysis of how it has been...

This paper investigates the determinants of new venture creation across industries and locations for 103 Italian provinces between 1997 and 2003. We allow for differences in regional opportunities across industries and investigate the impact of a range of factors on entrepreneurship in different...

This paper uses an Eclectic Framework explaining entrepreneurship incorporating different streams of literature and spanning different disciplines. The Eclectic Framework integrates factors shaping the demand for entrepreneurship on the one hand, with those influencing the supply of...

The paper claims that the analysis of the private business sector needs to concentrate on entrepreneurship. Based on fieldwork the paper proceeds by describing how Chinese entrepreneurs perceive the (economic) problems whose solutions pre-determine the economic performance of new firms....

Social networks matter in the innovation processes of young and small firms, since ‘innovation does not exist in a vacuum (Van De Ven, 1986: 601).’ The contacts a firm has could both generate advantages for further innovation and growth, and disadvantages leading to inertia and stagnation....

We examine the relationship, across 39 countries, between regulation and entrepreneurship using a new two-equation model. We find the minimum capital requirement required to start a business lowers entrepreneurship rates across countries, as do labour market regulations. However the...

In the 1950s and 1960s there was a debate about the nature of an agricultural cooperative: the cooperative as extension of the farm, the cooperative as vertical integration or the cooperative as a firm. We revisit this debate with various concepts from the theory of the firm that have been...

High-technology starters do not operate in a vacuum and innovation is not a solitary activity. The activities of technology-based firms are embedded in socio-economic networks with other companies, investors, universities, vocational institutions, etc. The geographical proximity of those...

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the number of business owners on three measures of economic performance, viz. employment growth, GDP growth and labor productivity growth. Particular attention is devoted to the lag structure. The analysis is performed at the country level for 21...

In contemporary literature on changing urban systems, it is often argued that the traditional central place conceptualisation is outdated and should be replaced by a network view that emphasises the increasing criss-crossing pattern of interdependencies between spatial units. This paper tests...