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Skills and regional entrepreneurship capital formation: a comparison between Germany and Portugal

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Abstract

Entrepreneurship capital has frequently been characterized as an important determinant of regional economic growth. Yet, we have limited knowledge about what explains why certain regions are more successful in creating entrepreneurship capital in general and in particular in technology- and knowledge-intensive sectors. In this paper, we shed light on the skill base of a region in terms of its endowment with human capital and the composition, i.e. specialization or diversity, of skills. Moreover, we look at the context in which entrepreneurship capital formation takes place by focusing on differences in the institutional infrastructures for entrepreneurship in two European countries: Germany and Portugal. Based on harmonized datasets, our results indicate important differences between the countries. Specifically, our results suggest that both specialization and diversity theories hold, and that the effects are thus contingent on regional factors.

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Notes

  1. We excluded the autonomous regions of Azores and Madeira due to data availability.

  2. In November 2001, two regions in the state of Lower Saxony were merged. From 2002 on the values of the variables for the formerly independent regions are thus equal. Germany has experienced several changes in its regional structure over the past decades which creates particular challenges for the collection of data. Widespread changes occurred from 2007 to 2011, resulting in only 402 NUTS-3 regions in 2013.

  3. For Germany, using data from the LIAB involves the restriction that some NUTS-3 regions, particularly in Eastern Germany, have been aggregated to microcensus regions in order to fulfil the minimum size requirements of 100,000 inhabitants. As a result, the 439 NUTS-3 regions are combined to 343 microcensus regions. Our analyses are based on the NUTS-3 regions, and therefore the two measures for the skill base had to be disaggregated in order to be merged with the other regional data. As both measures are shares, we decided to use the same value for every NUTS-3 region combined into a microcensus region, thus slightly reducing the variance for these measures.

  4. These professions refer to the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88) of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Occupations in Science and Engineering Codes 211–214, 221–223, 244, 245.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Melanie Arntz, Terry Gregory, Georg Metzger, Roberto Patuelli and the Portuguese Ministry of Economy for providing the data used in this study. Moreover, the authors thank Christian Rammer and the special issue editors Rosa Caiazza and David Audretsch as well as two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IN+, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Joana Mendonça

  2. Department Innovation and Organizational Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14A, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Christoph Grimpe

  3. Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, Germany

    Christoph Grimpe

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  1. Joana Mendonça
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  2. Christoph Grimpe
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Correspondence to Christoph Grimpe.

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Mendonça, J., Grimpe, C. Skills and regional entrepreneurship capital formation: a comparison between Germany and Portugal. J Technol Transf 41, 1440–1456 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-015-9444-5

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