Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation,
Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

No 103: Entrepreneurship and Local Growth - a comparison of the U.S. and Sweden

Benny Borgman and Pontus Braunerhjelm ()
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Benny Borgman: CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology
Pontus Braunerhjelm: CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology

Abstract: The U.S. is traditionally viewed as an economy driven by entrepreneurs, whereas the Swedish model is associated with high welfare ambitions and less focus on entrepreneurial activities. This paper seeks to empirically investigate whether the connection between entrepreneurship and growth at the regional level differs between the U.S. and Sweden. By regressing annual entrepreneurship on regional employment growth (and controlling for other conceivable variables impacting employment growth) entrepreneurship is shown to be positively and significantly associated with regional growth in both countries in the 1990s. Still, the result is more robust for the U.S. Other important variables for regional growth is business density and, in the case of the U.S., educational levels and internal scale economies.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Knowledge spillovers; Regional growth

JEL-codes: M13; O57; R11

32 pages, December 11, 2007

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