Udo Brixy (p), Lisa Bellmann

Nadine Levratto

Young firms find it difficult to attract (skilled) workers. Using linked employer-employee data for Germany we investigate how local labor market conditions affect the hiring success of young firms. In a first step, we estimate the probability of the founder becoming an employer. Using a two-stage Heckman selection model in a second step we analyze how local conditions influence the probability of hiring skilled human capital. The results indicate a positive relationship between the local unemployment level and the hiring probability of young firms – at least for some firms.

Alexandre Asselineau (p), Anne Albert-Cromarias

Nadine Levratto

The literature on the field of entrepreneurship has been considerably enriched over the past few years and deals with many aspects of the act of undertaking. A dominant trend seems to consider that, to be entrepreneurial, you need to be well surrounded, especially by having all the necessary partners at hand, hence the incubators and other collaborative innovation spaces.
In a global context of globalization and nomadic business, the question of the relationship of the company to its territory has arisen. The competitive paradigm also prevails in this field, and the rankings of countries, cities or regions that are leaders in terms of attractiveness inevitably lead to the development and equipping of territories that are already leaders and that have competitive advantages that are considered decisive compared to others.
This double observation raises two complementary questions. While we most often reason in reference to large companies, what about the smallest of them, by far the most numerous? On the other hand, since some territories inexorably attract more and more activity, what happens to the others, these "empty" territories which, less well endowed, therefore seem inexorably condemned?
This communication proposes to take an opposite approach to the mainstream perspective which postulate territorial determinism: if it is impossible to fight the trend desertification of the least attractive territories, how to explain the success of certain entrepreneurs (audacious? unconscious?) who engage in forgotten territories? Is it a whim?
We will approach this exploration through two complementary case studies, very different from all points of view, both in terms of activities, geographical areas, individuals involved and time dimension - one is in the start-up phase; the other is 40 years old.
In the light of these two cases, we can try to give some keys of analysis to the decisions taken by some atypical entrepreneurs to settle in an "empty" territory, rather unattractive and/or undeveloped, which they know well that they will have neither the resources nor the skills necessary to develop an ambitious project.

Marcus Dejardin, Korneliusz Pylak (p), Nebojša Stojčić

Nadine Levratto

see extended abstract

Pierre-François Wilmotte (p), Marcus Dejardin , Jean-Marie Halleux

Nadine Levratto

The aim of our paper is to expose some territorial evidence from a model explaining the firm productivity in Wallonia, the Southern region of Belgium. This model is part of our PhD-thesis project aiming to estimate the impact of territorial resources on the firm performance in Wallonia. Like many other European regions, Wallonia faces up to some challenges related to regional development: firm location is largely structured by agglomeration economies, generating some economic disparities across the region, while public policies in the regional development field are more focused on infrastructure and inexpensive land supply for some decades (Gouvernement wallon, 2014; Vandermeer, 2016; Wilmotte & Halleux, 2018).
We have developed an econometric model in order to correlate the productivity of Walloon SMEs with the firm intern factors estimated from accounting data and with access to territorial resources. By territorial resources, we mean the specific features of the territories that affect the ability of companies to develop their business. Our model illustrates the influence of several territorial resources with multi-scale effects: the key role of wages, the importance of location at European market scale, the effect of proximity to the first-rank cities (and not to the second-rank cities in the Walloon study case) and the weak interrelationship of local infrastructures with firm productivity. The results provide some contributions to the debate for regional development with the key role of agglomeration economies for the SMEs performance.