Begoña Cueto, Matías Mayor (p), Patricia Suárez

Michael Wyrwich

During recent years, self-employment has been promoted as a means of reducing unemployment and increasing entrepreneurship. One of the main programmes is the one known as the ‘Flat rate for self-employed workers’, launched in February 2013, which comprises a reduction in the minimum contribution to the Social Security System. In this paper, our aim is to evaluate the second phase of the flat rate, when the programme is in force for all new self-employed workers older than 30 who had not been self-employed during the previous five years. To do this, we use the Continuous Working Lives Sample (CWLS) and a differences-in-differences approach. Our results show that the programme has no effect in terms of survival rates. However, there are interesting regional differences that can help to develop policies according to the regional context.

Balázs Páger (p)

Michael Wyrwich

The local knowledge stock and R&D has a particularly important role in creating new and productive firms, since it serves as a source of entrepreneurial opportunities. However the different contexts may influence the impact of these spillover effects. The effect of different industrial structure, organizations, universities and other factors have already been investigated, but separately from each other. The regional entrepreneurship ecosystem consists a set of interconnected actors, organizations, institutions and processes. Entrepreneurial activity serves as an output of the entrepreneurship ecosystem and it provides the background for individuals to create opportunities for innovation. However productive entrepreneurial activities also vary across regions, as the regional conditions of individual and institutional factors within entrepreneurship ecosystems are different. Therefore this paper addresses the question whether the quality of regional entrepreneurial ecosystem has impact on the occurrence of productive firms. Data for 2011–2014 years have been collected from the regional dataset of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, OECD Patent statistics and Eurostat. The modified rate of high-growth oriented firms has been applied as dependent variable. It serves as a measure for productive entrepreneurship, since it captures not only the number of new workplaces (as in the original measure of high-growth orientation), but also the innovation-orientation, technology use and export-orientation. In order to capture the effect of local knowledge, the number of patents and the high-qualified human capital have been applied. The quality of regional entrepreneurial ecosystem has been determined by the Regional Entrepreneurship and Development Index (REDI Index) and regions have been clustered through their REDI Index scores. The first results suggested that the lack of efficient entrepreneurial ecosystem may hinder the occurrence of productive firms. The effect of patents and high-qualified human capital seems to be smaller in regions that have a weaker performance in terms of entrepreneurial ecosystem. While regions with more efficient ecosystem may rather provide a supportive environment for productive firms as the patents and high-qualified human capital have indicated more significant impact.

Filippo Di Pietro (p), Manuela Vega-Pascual, María-José Palacín-Sánchez, Rafaela Alfalla-Luque

Michael Wyrwich

This paper examines the relationship between entrepreneurial financial ecosystem and firm growth, at the local level. An analysis is done to expand the knowledge about how regional financial ecosystem influences firm growth and, therefore, the entrepreneurial activity consolidation. Obstacles in access to finance and financial constraints are an important environmental barrier in firm growth, especially in entrepreneur firms’ growth, within a single country. This study analyses a cohort of young Spanish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) combining both firm-level and regional level information. Data set for this research consists in an unbalanced panel of 89.358 observations representing every Spanish region for the period 2007-2015. The empirical analysis applies the panel data methodology, specifically the fixed effects estimator (within estimator), measuring young firm growth in terms of annual variation of total assets. Our results show that financial ecosystem is statistically significant, evidencing that the greater difficulties in access to external finance of smaller and younger firms point out the need to develop an appropriate financial environment to favour the growth of the youngest firm. The findings of this study are valuable for entrepreneurs and policymakers and show that efforts at national and European level to solve the financing problems of small and young businesses should continue.

Marcus Dejardin (p), Éva Komlósi, Balázs Páger, László Szerb

Michael Wyrwich

The contribution focuses on a configurational approach to regional performance in terms of economic development in Europe. In particular, it examines whether differentiated contributions from what have been identified as the pillars of entrepreneurship can be associated with similar regional economic development. In doing so, the contribution questions the idea that there would be a unique formula associating entrepreneurship and regional development. Is it about being relatively good in all the factors involved in entrepreneurship development to stand out in terms of performance, or a variety of configurations - some strong factors coming in compensation for others weaker - can lead to similar performances? If so, results confirming the variety of configurations would suggest the possibility of differentiated trajectories nevertheless yielding comparable results.