How does new business formation affect regional development? Introduction to the special issue

This paper gives an overview of the empirical research on the effects of new business formation on regional development and introduces the contributions to this special issue. The effects of new businesses on regional development emerge over a longer time-period of up to ten years. A main focus of the contributions to this special issue is on the distribution of these effects over time and on the magnitude of the overall effect. While the basic pattern found for the different countries and regions is quite similar, the magnitude of the overall effect can be different and may even be negative. There are strong indications, that the type of entrants plays an important role in this respect.