Terrific new report out by Zoltan Acs of George Mason University, Niels Bosma of Utrecht University, and Rolf Sternberg of University of Hamburg using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and other sources to track entrepreneurial activity in a sample of global cities.
Recent discussions in the Economic Geography literature increasingly focus on creative cities and the importance of creativity for achieving economic growth. Considering the increased attention on urban areas it is not surprising that the regional dimension of entrepreneurship is a subject of great interest. We set out a framework encompassing the individual process between entrepreneurial perceptions and entrepreneurial activity and demonstrate how the urban environment can have an impact on this process. We create entrepreneurship indices for 34 world cities exploiting the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Database 2001-2006. We investigate differences between the city-level and country-level for a selection of the indices. These exercises can be seen as initial tests of the ‘entrepreneurial advantage of cities.’ Based on the literature we expect that most indices will be higher for world cities, although exceptions are also plausible, for instance in world cities where the government resides. Our findings predominantly confirm the entrepreneurial advantage of world cities.
The full report is here.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:35 am
It seems is clear that, the orientation to differentiate the large metropolitan areas (or mega regions) level and the country level it makes sense, and is on the rise. I’m very excited with the current line of research of the Economic Geography scholars. Thanks for posting this paper! It’s on my desk!
August 11th, 2008 at 6:12 am
just a little correction: Prof Sternberg is of the University of Hannover
August 11th, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] London bias demystified: Only 15% of the Twitter UK micro-bloggers are from London, eroding some of the myths that early adopter tribes are within walking distance of a Tube stop or colonising creative class locales and entrepreneurial hotspots. [...]