New Urban Economic Agents: A Comparative Analysis of High-Performance New Entrepreneurs

Karima Kourtit, Peter Nijkamp and Suzuki Soushi
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Suzuki Soushi: Hokkai-Gakuen University Sapporo, Japan

Quaestiones Geographicae, 2016, vol. 35, issue 4, 5-22

Abstract: Migrants are often the carriers of new skills and original abilities. This study focuses on the importance of ‘new urban entrepreneurship’ - in particular, ethnic or migrant business firms - as a major driver of creative and urban dynamics and economic vitality in urban agglomerations. The paper offers a general account of both backgrounds and socio-economic implications of migrant entrepreneurship in large agglomerations and highlights the socio-economic heterogeneity in motivation and performance among different groups of migrant entrepreneurs. This demographic- cultural diversity prompts intriguing questions about differences in business performance among distinct groups of migrant entrepreneurs, even in the same ethnic group. In the paper, a recently developed and amended version of data envelopment analysis (DEA), viz. super-efficiency, is presented and applied to a group of Moroccan entrepreneurs in four large cities in the Netherlands. The main research aim is (i) to identify the best-performing firms (so-called ‘entrepreneurial heroes’) from a broad management and business perspective, while (ii) the background of our findings are more thoroughly analysed. The paper ends with some general concluding remarks on urban business strategies.

Keywords: economic vitality; urban development; entrepreneurship; migrant entrepreneurs; diversity; global diaspora economy; economic spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:quageo:v:35:y:2016:i:4:p:5-22:n:1

DOI: 10.1515/quageo-2016-0031

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