Document Type
Article
Date
1-2008
Keywords
tbd
Disciplines
Economics
Description/Abstract
Like all politics, all entrepreneurship is local. Individuals launch firms and, if successful, expand their enterprises to other locations. But new firms must start somewhere, even if their businesses are conducted largely or exclusively on the Internet. Likewise, policymakers at local and state levels increasingly recognize that entrepreneurship is the key to building and sustaining their economies' growth. Although this is a seemingly obvious proposition, it represents something of a departure from past thinking about how local, state, or regional economies grow. Historically, state and local policymakers have put their energies into trying to attract existing firms from somewhere else, either to relocate to a particular area or to build new facilities there. Such smokestack chasing - or, in this cleaner era, simply firm chasing - often has degenerated into what is essentially a zero-sum game for the national economy. When one city or state offers tax breaks or other financial inducements to encourage firms to locate new plants or headquarters, and succeeds, some other city or state loses out in the process. Local, state, and regional economic development centered on entrepreneurship, however, is a fundamentally different phenomenon. The formation and growth of new firms, especially those built around new products or ways of doing things, wherever this occurs, is clearly a positive sum game, not just for the locality, but for the nation as a whole. This essay provides a guide to policymakers and citizens to what is known about the effects of various local and state policies aimed at fostering entrepreneurially driven growth. There is also much we do not know; thus, the essay identifies subjects that require further research.
Recommended Citation
Acs, Zoltan J.; Glaeser, Edward L.; Litan, Robert E.; Fleming, Lee; Goetz, Stephan J.; Kerr, William R.; Klepper, Steven; Rosenthal, Stuart S.; Sorenson, Olav; and Strange, William C., "Entrepreneurship and Urban Success: Toward a Policy Consensus" (2008). Economics - All Scholarship. 61.
https://surface.syr.edu/ecn/61
Source
Harvested from ssrn.com
Additional Information
This manuscript is from the Social Science Research Network, for more information see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1092493#586750