Frank Crowley (p), Peter Barlow

The entrepreneur has long been regarded as a key catalyst of economic growth. The empirical literature supports this premise with several studies finding that entrepreneurship has a positive and significant effect on economic growth. Much less interest, however, has been expressed in what exactly influences entrepreneurship and how policy makers can enhance the entrepreneurial dynamics within a country. This study examines the factors that influence entrepreneurship, with particular focus on the role played by talent, tolerance and trust. Florida (2002) argues that a highly talented educated workforce and a tolerant diverse community, which has a 'live and let live' ethos is essential for economic progress. We argue that there is also a requirement for a society to have trust in institutions and people where social capital acts as the glue for talent and tolerant societies to prosper. Consequently, this study examines the factors that influence entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on the role played by talent, tolerance and trust. We use data from the 2016 Life in Transition survey. We employ a probit model modelling the factors explaining the propensity of respondents to attempt to start a new business across 14 countries in the EU. The model controls for robust clusters at NUTS III regional level. Preliminary findings suggest that institutional trust and intolerance inhibits entrepreneurship and talent and networking are important determinants of a person’s propensity to be an entrepreneur.

References

Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community, and everyday life. New York: Basic Books.

Olubunmi Ipinnaiye (p), Justin Doran , Helena Lenihan

Of late, there has been a resurgence of industrial policy in many developed economies, driven by factors such as globalisation and the recent economic crisis. The renewed policy interest in targeting sectors to stimulate employment growth and engender regional and national economic development necessitates an investigation of the drivers of firm performance. Although several studies have linked heterogeneity in firm growth to differences in firm resources, capabilities and strategy, the role of regional characteristics in explaining these observed differences is yet to be fully explored in the literature till date. This paper analyses the interactions between firm growth and regional factors (human capital, innovation, and socio-economic conditions) and examines the implications for industrial policy. The study employs the quantile regression method to analyse a large panel dataset of manufacturing firms from the Irish Census of Industrial Production over the period 2008-2012. The paper contributes to the extant literature by providing empirical evidence which highlights the importance of regional factors for firm growth and industrial policy. Results also indicate that the impact of regional factors on firm growth varies along the growth rate distribution. We address the gap in the literature by providing empirical evidence which suggests that the benefits derived from agglomeration vary with firm type and size. Insights gained from this analysis yield important implications for industrial policy, which are particularly important given recent public policy emphasis on promoting regional clustering and high-growth firms.

Eva Kazemi-Santa (p), Izabella Szakalne Kano , Imre Lengyel

Most human capital theories agree on the concept that people invest in their training and education in order to increase their productivity. The human capital can be measured based on the costs of education and the earnings achieved with such education, or it can be measured as the output and performance of the education system. We follow the latter method and measure human capital using data on tertiary educated population.

There are various approaches investigating the effect of human capital on regional development and regional growth. The economic growth models explore a direct relationship between investment in education and the level and growth of GDP per capita.

In addition, investment in human resources, has indirect effects that are normally not captured in measured national economic growth. These spill-overs can be spatial through city dynamics: geographical clustering of businesses employing highly qualified workers produce high productivity and strong economic growth. Other externalities can be better health, longer life-expectancy and reduced crime-rates.

In our study we will explore the effect of tertiary education on regional growth with control variables at the level of Hungarian subregions (LAU1). Based on the eigenvector spatial filtering technique, the paper shows evidence that higher educational inputs increase productivity and so produce higher levels of national growth.

Ioannis Kaplanis (p), Marianna Tagaraki

The high rate of innovation could be linked to economic growth as it can be a driving force for competitiveness and increased welfare. Investment in research and development (R&D) is critical for fostering a successful innovation level. For this reason, governments support R&D activities through a variety of instruments such as fiscal incentives and direct grants. The effectiveness of such policies is crucial for a sustainable path of growth, especially in times of financial rigidity, and needs cautious examination.
In Greece the government investment in R&D has increased significantly during the last decade which is interesting, taking into account the recent period of acute crisis (2009-2015). Regional differences in innovative performance demonstrate the necessity to evaluate the impact of such policies in promoting innovation and in turn, economic growth. To our knowledge, this type of evaluation takes place for the first time for the Country.
In this paper, we utilize for the first time newly collected and processed data from the Greek Patent Office (Hellenic Industrial Property Organization- OBI), in order to frame and analyze the innovative performance for Greek regions for the period of 1988-2016.
For evaluating the impact of Greek R&D government spending, we employ different models of the standard investment equation introducing dynamics controlling for other determinants such as human capital, social-economic factors, corporate and market characteristics. Innovative performance is measured by quantity and quality patent indicators. Our study provides interesting results relating to R&D government spending effectiveness in promoting innovation and demonstrates the role of other regional characteristics in this direction, as well.