Entrepreneurship and Regional Economic Development: A Spatial Perspective

In a shrinking and increasingly globalised world, it is vital for any entrepreneur to carefully select the location at which production or other economic activities will occur. This book provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of entrepreneurial behaviour in a spatial context, and links it to important new fields in economics such as endogenous growth theory, the new economic geography and evolutionary theory.

Although most of the literature to date has failed to study the geographic element of entrepreneurship, this book redresses the balance by examining the spatial variation in entrepreneurial activity and the implications of this for regional policy. The authors provide an in-depth analysis of the role of the entrepreneur in fostering economic development, document the most important recent theoretical and empirical developments, and explain the reasons why some regions grow whereas others stagnate. They also present a number of empirical analyses including case studies from the manufacturing and ICT sectors, as well as an examination of the role of university-based knowledge transfer and entrepreneurial behaviour. Throughout the book, the role of knowledge, knowledge transmission and knowledge spillovers are considered as they relate to entrepreneurial activity and location decisions.

This book presents many important new findings on the relationship between entrepreneurship, agglomeration and economic growth. It will make a substantial addition to the literature and will be essential reading for regional economists, geographers, business and management analysts, and development practitioners and policymakers.

Edited by Henri L.F. de Groot, Professor, VU University Amsterdam, Tinbergen Institute and Ecorys NEI, Peter Nijkamp, Professor Emeritus, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Centre for European Studies, Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza din Iasi, Romania and the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, China and the late Roger R. Stough, formerly School of Policy, Government and International Affairs, George Mason University, US