The Impact of Geographic Differences in Human Capital on Service Firm Formation Rates

Zoltan J. Acs, () and Catherine Armington

Discussion Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy from Max Planck Institute of Economics, Group for Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy

Abstract: Although human capital externalities are a key variable in theories of economic growth, there has been little investigation of the mechanism by which these externalities are realized. We examine the relationship between the local levels of human capital and firm formation rates and find that formation rates differ with the share of adults with college degrees, especially for industries that normally require college-educated founders. They also differ strongly with the local concentration of existing establishments in the same sector, especially for industries serving non-local markets, suggesting that an important mechanism is the spillover of relevant knowledge.

Keywords: Firm formation; Knowledge spillovers; Entrepreneurship; Human capital; Regional growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R1 L80 J24 M13 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-geo and nep-ure
Date: Written 2004-03
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://papers.mpiew-jena.mpg.de/egp/discussionpapers/2004-15.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of geographic differences in human capital on service firm formation rates (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy from Max Planck Institute of Economics, Group for Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Lydia Nobis (). This e-mail address is bad, please contact .