Only a few years ago the conventional wisdom predicted that globalization would render the demise of the region as a meaningful unit of economic analysis. Yet the obsession of policy-makers around the globe to 'create the next Silicon Valley' reveals the increased importance of geographic...

In this paper we investigate the determinants of entrepreneurial activity in a cross section of German regions for the period 1998-2005. Departing from the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship, the focus of our analysis is on the role of the regional environment and, in particular,...

This paper examines the impact of industry knowledge conditions and corporate governance structures on tangible investment and its financing. Based on a large panel data set of German firms we investigate whether liquidity constraints vary systematically across firms engaged in activities...

This paper applies a modified version of the `income choice' model to explain variations in new-firm formation across Italian provinces over the period 1985-8. Based on a panel data of start-up activity in 78 Italian provinces and using two different databases, we find support for the overall...

Whether diversity or specialization of economic activity better promotes technological change and subsequent economic growth has been the subject of a heated debate in the economics literature. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of the composition of economic activity on...

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on why so many smaller-scale firms which have traditionally been classified as sub-optimal scale firms can exist. We suggest that by pursuing a strategy of compensating factor differentials, that is by remunerating and deploying factors of...

This paper sheds light on the questions, Why does knowledge spill over? and How does knowledge spill over? The answer to these questions lies in the incentives confronting scientists to appropriate the expected value of their knowledge considered in the context of their path-dependent career...

A cross-section empirical analysis examining the entry behavior of small firms is provided in this paper. While the authors find that certain traditional market structure characteristics and entry barriers have a strong impact on small-firm entry behavior, the reliance upon innovative strategy...

The authors present a model suggesting that innovative output is influenced by R&D and market struc ture characteristics. Using a new and direct measure of innovation in a cross-section regression model estimating the total number of inno vations and large- and small-firm innovations, they find...

In this paper we first propose a proxy for the maturity of a country’s export bundle based on product life cycle theory. Employing a conditional latent class model, we then examine the effect of maturity of countries’ exports on their economic growth for 98 countries over the period 1988 to...