Entrepreneurship and regional growth: an evolutionary interpretation

While the neoclassical growth theory considered economic growth as a process of mere accumulation of production capital, the endogenous growth theory shifted the lens to the importance of knowledge in the production process and its potential to create spillovers. We argue in this paper that there is a gap between knowledge and exploitable knowledge or economic knowledge. Economic knowledge emerges from a selection process across the generally available body of knowledge, actively driven by economic agents. This paper suggests that entrepreneurship is an important mechanism in driving that selection process hence in creating diversity of knowledge, which in turn serves as a mechanism facilitating the spillover of knowledge. We provide empirical evidence that regions with higher levels of entrepreneurship indeed exhibit stronger growth in labor productivity. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2004