IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa12p91.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Startups and Local Social Capital in the Municipalities of Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Hans Westlund
  • Johan P. Larsson
  • Amy Olsson

Abstract

This paper contains one of the first empirical attempts to investigate the influence of local Entrepreneurial Social Capital on startup propensity. We use a unique database including not only total startups, but data on startups divided in six branches to study the impact of Entrepreneurial social capital on startups per capita. Analyses are performed on all municipalities as well as by municipality type (urban or rural). Entrepreneurial social capital, measured by local firms’ assessment of local publics’ attitudes to entrepreneurship seem to exert a positive and significant influence on local startup rates in both urban and rural municipalities in Sweden. When startups are being divided in six branch groups, entrepreneurial social capital keeps its significance for all branches in rural areas, while it stays significant for two of the groups in urban areas. Thus, social capital seems to have a broader and more general impact on startup rates in rural areas. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Entrepreneurial social capital

Suggested Citation

  • Hans Westlund & Johan P. Larsson & Amy Olsson, 2012. "Startups and Local Social Capital in the Municipalities of Sweden," ERSA conference papers ersa12p91, European Regional Science Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa12p91
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa12/e120821aFinal00093.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Westlund, Hans & Bolton, Roger, 2003. "Local Social Capital and Entrepreneurship," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 77-113, September.
    2. Mark T. Schenkel & Diana M. Hechavarria & Charles H. Matthews, 2009. "The Role of Human and Social Capital and Technology in Nascent Ventures," International Studies in Entrepreneurship, in: Richard T. Curtin & Paul D. Reynolds (ed.), New Firm Creation in the United States, chapter 0, pages 157-183, Springer.
    3. Johnson, P S, 1983. "New Manufacturing Firms in the U.K. Regions," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 30(1), pages 75-79, February.
    4. Martin Andersson & Urban Gråsjö, 2009. "Spatial dependence and the representation of space in empirical models," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 43(1), pages 159-180, March.
    5. Thomas Gries & Wim Naudé, 2008. "Entrepreneurship and Regional Economic Growth: Towards A General Theory of Start-Ups," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2008-70, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Hans Westlund, 2006. "Social Capital in the Knowledge Economy," Advances in Spatial Science, Springer, number 978-3-540-35366-9, Fall.
    7. Hans Westlund, 2011. "Multidimensional entrepreneurship: theoretical considerations and Swedish empirics," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(3), pages 199-218, August.
    8. Storey, David J & Johnson, Steven G, 1987. "Regional Variations in Entrepreneurship in the U.K," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 34(2), pages 161-173, May.
    9. Börje Johansson & Johan Klaesson & Michael Olsson, 2003. "Commuters’ non-linear response to time distances," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 315-329, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Fritsch & Michael Wyrwich, 2015. "The Persistence of Regional Entrepreneurship - Are all types of Self-Employment Equally Important?," Jena Economics Research Papers 2015-008, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    2. Michael Fritsch & Sandra Kublina, 2019. "Persistence and change of regional new business formation in the national league table," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 891-917, July.
    3. Stuetzer, Michael & Obschonka, Martin & Audretsch, David B. & Wyrwich, Michael & Rentfrow, Peter J. & Coombes, Mike & Shaw-Taylor, Leigh & Satchell, Max, 2016. "Industry structure, entrepreneurship, and culture: An empirical analysis using historical coalfields," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 52-72.
    4. Michael Fritsch & Michael Wyrwich, 2016. "Does persistence in start-up activity reflect persistence in social capital?," Chapters, in: Hans Westlund & Johan P. Larsson (ed.), Handbook of Social Capital and Regional Development, chapter 4, pages 82-107, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Michael Fritsch & Michael Wyrwich, 2014. "The Effect of Regional Entrepreneurship Culture on Economic Development - Evidence for Germany," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1411, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Apr 2014.
    6. Luigi Bonatti & Andrea Fracasso, 2017. "Addressing the Core-Periphery Imbalances in Europe: Resource Misallocation and Expansionary Fiscal Policies," EconPol Working Paper 6, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    7. Amy Rader Olsson & Hans Westlund & Johan P. Larsson, 2020. "Entrepreneurial Governance and Local Growth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-16, May.
    8. Klaesson, Johan & Larsson, Johan P, 2014. "Education and Self-employment Propensity," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 345, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    9. Tubadji, Annie & Nijkamp, Peter & Santarelli, Enrico, 2017. "Shacklean Uncertainty and Cultural Embeddedness as Innovation Constraints in the UK," GLO Discussion Paper Series 111, Global Labor Organization (GLO).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hans Westlund & Johan P. Larsson & Amy Rader Olsson, 2014. "Start-ups and Local Entrepreneurial Social Capital in the Municipalities of Sweden," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(6), pages 974-994, June.
    2. Kent Eliasson & Hans Westlund, 2013. "Attributes influencing self-employment propensity in urban and rural Sweden," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 50(2), pages 479-514, April.
    3. Backman, Mikaela & Palmberg, Johanna, 2015. "Contextualizing small family firms: How does the urban–rural context affect firm employment growth?," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 247-258.
    4. Hans WESTLUND & Malin GAWELL, 2012. "Building Social Capital For Social Entrepreneurship," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 83(1), pages 101-116, March.
    5. Hans Westlund & Amy Olsson, 2011. "Economic Entrepreneurship, Startups and Their Effects on Local Development: The Case of Sweden," ERSA conference papers ersa11p327, European Regional Science Association.
    6. Martin Andersson & Johan P. Larsson, 2022. "Historical local industry structure, voting patterns and the long-run entrepreneurial character of regions: Swedish examples," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 69(3), pages 611-631, December.
    7. Shao, Yan & Sun, Lingxia, 2021. "Entrepreneurs’ social capital and venture capital financing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 499-512.
    8. Duschl, Matthias & Schimke, Antje & Brenner, Thomas & Luxen, Dennis, 2011. "Firm growth and the spatial impact of geolocated external factors: Empirical evidence for German manufacturing firms," Working Paper Series in Economics 36, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    9. Andersson, Martin & Noseleit, Florian, 2008. "Start-Ups and Employment Growth - Evidence from Sweden," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 155, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    10. Backman, Mikaela & Karlsson, Charlie, 2013. "Who says life is over after 55? Entrepreneurship and an aging population," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 325, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    11. Martin Andersson & Johan Klaesson & Johan P. Larsson, 2016. "How Local are Spatial Density Externalities? Neighbourhood Effects in Agglomeration Economies," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 1082-1095, June.
    12. Karlsson, Charlie & Rouchy, Philippe, 2015. "Regional Economic Development, Social Capital and Governance: A Comparative Institutional Analysis France - Sweden," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 406, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    13. Matthias Duschl & Tobias Scholl & Thomas Brenner & Dennis Luxen & Falk Raschke, 2015. "Industry-Specific Firm Growth and Agglomeration," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(11), pages 1822-1839, November.
    14. Elvin Afandi & Majid Kermani & Fuad Mammadov, 2017. "Social capital and entrepreneurial process," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 685-716, September.
    15. Pia Nilsson & Sara Johansson, 2013. "Location determinants of agricultural land prices," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 33(1), pages 1-21, February.
    16. Roberto PATUELLI & Enrico SANTARELLI & Annie TUBADJI, 2020. "Entrepreneurial intention among high-school students: the importance of parents, peers and neighbors," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(2), pages 225-251, June.
    17. Tobias Arvemo & Urban Gråsjö, 2014. "University colleges’ effect on economic growth in Swedish middlesized municipalities," Chapters, in: Charlie Karlsson & Börje Johansson & Kiyoshi Kobayashi & Roger R. Stough (ed.), Knowledge, Innovation and Space, chapter 12, pages 287-304, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Börje Johansson & Johan Klaesson, 2011. "Agglomeration dynamics of business services," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 47(2), pages 373-391, October.
    19. Michael Olsson, 2012. "Free Versus Monitored Job Search," Chapters, in: Charlie Karlsson & Börje Johansson & Roger R. Stough (ed.), The Regional Economics of Knowledge and Talent, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Ana Condeço-Melhorado & Aura Reggiani & Javier Gutiérrez (ed.), 2014. "Accessibility and Spatial Interaction," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15267.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    entrepreneurship; startups; entrepreneurial social capital;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa12p91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.