Alexander Mikhaylov (p)

Jan Cornelius Peters

Entrepreneurial activity forms a significant part of the economy of urban agglomerations. During the last years researchers considered specifics of local entrepreneurial ecosystems as one of its key determinants. This term may be defined, for example, as an ‘interconnected group of actors in a local geographic community committed to sustainable development through the support and facilitation of new sustainable ventures’ (Cohen, 2006; Audretsch et al, 2021). Differences in the specifics of entrepreneurial ecosystems can become a significant factor in the socio-economic polarization of territories (Zemtsov, Baburin, 2019). For instance, cities and regions with more developed entrepreneurial ecosystems are more resilient to crises (Iacobucci, Perugini, 2021).
Spatial aspects of entrepreneurial ecosystems have attracted less attention than some other ones, especially at local level. Nevertheless, study of local structures and interactions in entrepreneurial ecosystems seems to be important to understanding their nature. Firstly, it is at this level that interaction between the actors of entrepreneurial ecosystems takes place, including the exchange of information and knowledge spillovers (Roundy, Bayer, 2019). Secondly, the degree of spatial socio-economic polarization among different local communities may be more significant than at regional or national level (Nefedova, 2009). These aspects may become even more vital in the cases of countries with sparse distribution of urban population (Nefedova, 2009; Capello, 2002), as well as in the countries which have experienced post-socialist transition and therefore had less time for establishing sustainable entrepreneurial culture (Audretsch, Keilbach, 2007).
The aim of the paper is to examine the spatial structures of local entrepreneurial ecosystems in large urban agglomeration of Nizhny Novgorod (Russia). We use the SPARK-Interfax database in order to obtain characteristics (including economic domain, company’s age, location, average revenue etc.) of 56.000 enterprises residing in agglomeration for period of 2019-2021. Particular attention is paid to local contexts of Nizhny Novgorod’s suburbs and peripheral areas, especially through the prism of post-socialist transition. We use methods of spatial analysis and spatial econometrics to consider spatial structures of urban entrepreneurial activity, depict socio-economic ‘portraits’ of local entrepreneurial ecosystems and reveal potential spatial boundaries among them. As a result, we conceptualize differentiation of three types of these boundaries (‘physical’, ‘functional’ and ‘structural’ ones). Also, we propose a typology of local entrepreneurial ecosystems for our case.

Andreas Koch (p), Martin Kroczek

Alexander Mikhaylov

Developed countries like Germany have been suffering from skilled labor shortage in nursing since a couple of years. Demands for wage raises have become a central theme in the public and scientific debate concerning measures to increase nursing labor supply. Exploiting regional and temporal differences, we analyze wage reactions to shortages in the market for nursing labor in Germany. Though the institutional settings constrain the development of wages in the care sector, the actual compensations of both geriatric and hospital nurses exhibit considerable amounts of variation. Using data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey (GSES) and the German Employment Agency, we analyze whether wages of nurses react to regional variation in the demand for care services. To address endogeneity issues, we apply a fixed effects instrumental variables approach as well as system GMM-estimation. We find wage reactions to skill shortage, although not in all care settings and ownership structures. Institutional differences play an important role. Publicly owned institutions pay higher wages where skill shortages are more serious. A finding that is driven by publicly owned hospitals, which make up for the vast majority of publicly owned care providers. Also, wages in outpatient care, which are predominantly privately owned, react to increased shortages. Providers of long-term inpatient care do not exhibit wage reactions, however.

Jan Cornelius Peters (p)

Andreas Koch

Using administrative data on individual employment biographies, this paper analyzes whether dynamic agglomeration effects are primarily due to the quality of jobs in large cities and associated advantages for acquiring valuable work experience. Our results indicate that around 50% of the return of an additional year of work experience gained in the densest local labor markets in Germany can be ascribed to the sectors, tasks and types of establishments in which experience was acquired. We further show that native and foreign workers, on average, benefit to a similar extent from dynamic agglomeration effects and from better access to higher-quality jobs in big cities. However, low-skilled foreign workers receive a lower return to big city experience than observationally identical natives. This difference can be explained by the fact that the former gain work experience in lower-quality jobs.

Wen-Chung Guo (p)

This study attempts to establish a spatial oligopoly theory to analyze online/offline competition with the role of price monitoring and its association with endogenous market structure and welfare analysis. It is motivated by growing online/offline dual channel and price monitoring based on big data those may induce recent concerns on antitrust. A modified circular model with a combination with internet-connected competition between non-neighboring firms is provided for our online/offline competition analysis.

The equilibrium prices, firms’ profit and social welfare will be derived in our modified spatial oligopoly. We explore how online-channel tendency affects equilibrium prices and endogenous market structure under free entry. Online/offline competition will be expected to affect excess entry theorem because of the business-stealing effect is changed by the internet-channel tendency. It contributes to the existing limited theoretical studies by focusing on the effects of both the online/offline competition and price monitoring on competition policy. This project also further examines the scenario when firms adopt pricing algorithm to set prices in our online/offline economy. Whether tacit collusion appears will be examined by considerable deep learning and computations. Potential empirical explanations and competition policy implication from the proposed model predictions are expected. The implied association between digitalization and regional inequality is discussed. Furthermore, several extensions include quality along as price competition, elastic demand, and a more general model with labor supply and consumption.