Local Clusters of Entrepreneurs -neighborhood peer effects in entrepreneurship?

Martin Andersson and Johan Larsson

No 2013/30, Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

Abstract: Entrepreneurial activity is significantly predicted by the presence of other entrepreneurs in the residential neighborhood. One plausible source of such spatial clustering is local peer effects, where individuals’ decisions to become entrepreneurs are influenced by entrepreneurial neighbors. Using geo-coded matched employer-employee data for Sweden, we find that sharing residential neighborhood with established entrepreneurs has a statistically significant and robust influence on the probability than an individual leaves employment for entrepreneurship. An otherwise average neighborhood with a 5 percentage point higher entrepreneurial intensity all else equal produces between 7 and 8 more entrepreneurs per square kilometer, each year. Local peer effects appear as important in explaining local clusters of entrepreneurs, and imply a local feedback-effect in which the presence of established entrepreneurs in a neighborhood breeds new local entrepreneurs

Keywords: entrepreneurship; clusters; peer effects; local social interactions; role models; neighborhood; social network externalities; path dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 L26 R12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2013-11-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-geo, nep-net, nep-sbm, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wp.circle.lu.se/upload/CIRCLE/workingpapers/201330_Andersson_Larsson.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2013_030

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers in Innovation Studies from Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research, Lund University, PO Box 117, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Torben Schubert ().