We investigate persistence and change of the levels of regional new business formation in West Germany over a period of thirty years. Our indicator is the position of a region in the national ranking. As indicated by previous studies, we generally find a rather high level of persistence and...

We distinguish four types of regional growth regimes based on the type of relationship between new business formation and economic development. The distinguishing characteristics of these regime types are analyzed in order to identify the reasons for different growth performance. Although growth...

The paper targets the relationship between growth of cooperation and later growth of innovation at the regional level. Patent data for German regions and eleven subsequent years is used to identify collaborative activity as well as the innovative output in each region. The results confirm to...

There is a research gap with respect to understanding the role of entrepreneurial culture and tradition for actual start-up behaviour. We combine historical self-employment data (entrepreneurial tradition) with a psychological measure for entrepreneurial attitudes (entrepreneurial culture). The...

We use the historical self-employment rate as an indicator of a regional culture of entrepreneurship and link this measure to economic growth in recent periods. The results indicate that German regions with a high level of entrepreneurship in the mid- 1920s have higher start-up rates about 80...

We investigate the persistence of levels of self-employment and new business formation in different time periods and under different framework conditions. The analysis shows that high levels of regional self-employment and new business formation tend to be persistent for periods as long as 80...

We explore the role of different types of self-employment for a persistence of the regional level of entrepreneurship over time. Our analysis for West German regions shows relatively strong effects for the historical self- employment rate in the non-agricultural sector, particularly in...

We investigate the relationship between new business formation and the level of competitive pressure perceived by manufacturing incumbent establishments. The perceived pressure of competition is stronger the higher the level of entries in the respective industry. This relationship holds not only...

Popular theories claim that innovation activities should be located in large cities because of more favorable environmental conditions that are absent in smaller cities or remote and rural areas. Germany provides a clear counterexample to such theories. We argue that a main force behind the...