Michael Fritsch

• Professor of Economics
• Professor at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

This paper compares the factors related to the persistence and change of regional levels of new business formation in the United States, England and Wales, and West Germany. The three economies are highly comparable both in levels of path dependency in their regional start-up rate rankings and in the factors related to long-term changes in regional...

David Storey was fascinated by the long-term dynamics of regional entrepreneurship. For measuring such long-term dynamics, he favored rankings of regions according to their levels of entrepreneurial activity, which he called ‘entrepreneurial league tables’. One main advantage of comparing rank positions of regions over time is that this measure can...

We describe the procedure for compiling a list of industrial monuments in the regions of Germany and the resulting data set. In addition, we provide an overview of the regional distribution of the number of industrial monuments in Germany. The data set is publicly available on the Internet. Wir beschreiben die Vorgehensweise bei der Erstellung ein...

In light of persistent regional inequalities in adaptive outcomes such as health, wellbeing, and related personality traits, psychological research is increasingly adopting a historical perspective to understand the deeper roots of these patterns. In this study, we examine the role of ancient cultures, specifically the impact of Roman civilization...

This article discusses the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems. In particular, three propositions are made for further development of the concept. First, it is argued that entrepreneurial ecosystems should be regarded a part of the regional innovation system. Second, the scope of the concept should be expanded beyond high-performance start-ups an...

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag untersuchen Michael Fritsch, Maria Greve und Michael Wyrwich die Auswirkungen der deutschen Teilung und Wiedervereinigung auf die Innovationsaktivitäten in Ostdeutschland. Die empirischen Analysen deuten darauf hin, dass die Vorteile der Integration der beiden Innovationssysteme zu einem großen Teil in Westdeutschl...

The concept of an ‘entrepreneurial ecosystem’ has become a major means for both theorizing and making policy decisions concerning entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development. The notion of an entrepreneurial ecosystem captures the way in which entrepreneurship is increasingly performed and undertaken via the innate interdependencies exis...

We describe and analyze the long-term development of self-employment in German regions between 1895 and 2019. Based on rankings (“league tables”) for the two years we identify those regions where the relative level of self-employment significantly increased (‘leapfroggers’), and those where the level of self-employment as compared to other regions...

We investigate whether the development of regional disparities in entrepreneurship and innovation in Germany can be traced back to Roman rule 2,000 years ago. We find a lasting positive Roman effect on the level and quality of entrepreneurship and innovation. This effect might be due to the imprint of local hard factors, such as interregional socia...

We propose an extension of the standard occupational choice model to analyze the life satisfaction of senior entrepreneurs as compared to paid employees and particularly retirees in Germany. The analysis identifies income and health status as main factors that shape the relationship between occupational status and life satisfaction. Senior entrepre...

We investigate how 40 years of a communist regime in East Germany and the subsequent German unification affected innovation activities. The empirical evidence suggests that the benefits of integrating the two innovation systems were much greater in the West than in the East, which has resulted in an increasing gap in innovation activities between t...

This paper analyses persistence and change in the regional league table of entrepreneurship performance in the United States in comparison with England and Wales and West Germany. It examines whether regional rankings in start-up and self-employment rates in the United States are as sticky over time as in these European countries over approximately...

Mounting empirical evidence shows that regional differences of entrepreneurship are persistent over long periods of time that may reflect the prevalence of an entrepreneurial culture. We explore three important mechanisms behind the transmission of such an entrepreneurial culture. First, we analyze the role model effects at the household level. We...

Florida's approach to urban and regional development focusing on innovation and the creative class spurred an awareness of how space and particularly soft locational characteristics is related to economic performance. In the light of two decades of theoretical discussions and empirical findings this chapter reflect on three aspects of Florida's cre...

We review and discuss research on the development of regional entrepreneurship over time. A particular focus is on the long-term persistence of regional levels of entrepreneurship, its explanation, and its meaning for economic development. What is the state of empirical research in this field, and what can explain the empirical findings? How are lo...

We describe and compare the development trajectories of two German regions, South Saxony and Mecklenburg, with a special focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. South Saxony has a long history of self-employment and knowledge generation that results in a persistent culture of innovative entrepreneurship. In Mecklenburg, such a culture did never e...

The unification of the East and West German states in 1990 initiated the integration of two distinct innovation systems. In this process, the poorly functioning socialist system of East Germany adopted the formal institutions and organization of West Germany, a western-style market economy. We investigate the effect of this integration on patenting...

The development of inventor networks is characterized by the addition of a significant number of new inventors, while a considerable number of incumbent inventors discontinue. We estimated the persistence of knowledge in the inventor networks of nine German regions using alternative assumptions about knowledge transfer. Based on these estimates, we...

The papers contained in this Special Issue are a selection of contributions presented originally at a two-day workshop that took place in November 2019 at the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Poland. The workshop focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, and local-level policy initiatives aimed at stimulating economic...

We document the generation and the content of the Comprehensive Patent Database (CPDB) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949-1990), which is freely available at GESIS https://doi.org/10.7802/2448. The database contains all patents granted in the GDR and published by the Office of Inventions and Patents (later: German Patent and Trade Mark O...

We document the generation and the content of the Comprehensive Patent Database (CPDB) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (1949-1990), which is freely available at GESIS https://doi.org/10.7802/2448. The database contains all patents granted in the GDR and published by the Office of Inventions and Patents (later: German Patent and Trade Mark O...

What characterizes regions where right-wing populist parties are relatively successful? A prominent hypothesis proposed in the emerging “geography of discontent” literature claims that places that are “left behind” constitute a breeding ground for the rise of populism. We re-examine this hypothesis by analyzing the rise of populism in Germany. Our...

We review and discuss research on the development of regional entrepreneurship over time. A particular focus is on the long-term persistence of regional levels of entrepreneurship, its explanation, and its meaning for economic development. What is the state of empirical research in this field, and what can explain the empirical findings? How are lo...

The rigorous anti-entrepreneurial policies that prevailed during communist regime did not leave any long-term negative ef¬fects on the level of self-employment in East Germany. On the contrary, self-employment in East Germany is higher today than in the West of the country. Our analysis suggests that the current differences in self-employment be¬tw...

We investigate how specific regional conditions found in East Germany at the end of the socialist regime impact development during the turbulent shock transition to a market economy. Both the self-employment rate (an indicator of a pre-socialist entrepreneurial tradition) and the share of the workforce with a university degree (as measure of the ge...

Gesamtheit aller Patentanmeldungen und -erteilungen in der DDR, die im Zeitraum zwischen dem 1.1.1939 (Anmeldung vor, aber Erteilung in der DDR) und dem 29.06.2006 (Anmeldung in, aber Erteilung nach der DDR) vom Amt für Erfindungs- und Patentwesen (AfEP, später: Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt/DPMA) veröffentlicht wurden. Der Kerndatensatz umfasst...

Entrepreneurship is often found to be highly persistent over time. Although the historical roots of persisting effects of entrepreneurship are partially uncovered, their mechanisms remained largely unclear. To understand the historical roots of contemporaneous regional entrepreneurship, we exploit different types of historical self-employment in re...

We investigate how self-employment in East Germany was impacted by 40 years of Soviet-style communism and the subsequent shock transition to a market economic system. To this end, we compare self-employment in East and West Germany after reunification with self-employment before the separation of Germany after World War II. Our results show that th...

From a macro perspective, inventor networks tend to generate remarkably stable structures over time. At the same time, we observe highly dynamic processes at the micro level, in terms of inventor entries and exits as well as formations and terminations of collaborative relationships between them. In order to explain this-at least at the first glanc...

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected not only incumbent firms, but also the emergence of start-ups. This paper investigates and analyzes the pandemic's effect on new business formation, as well as business exits and insolvencies, in Germany. We find that the overall level of business registrations slightly decreased during the first year of the...

Es werden zentrale Ergebnisse des Buches knapp zusammengefasst und wesentliche Schlussfolgerungen gezogen. Da wesentlich Determinanten von Entrepreneurship sehr langfristig wirken und sich die positiven Effekte häufig erst über lange Zeiträume entfalten, sollte die Entrepreneurship-Politik auch langfristig orientiert sein. Die erheblichen Unterschi...

Dieses Kapitel gibt zunächst einen Überblick über typische Finanzierungsquellen von neu gegründeten Unternehmen. Daran anschließend wird erläutert, aus welchen Gründen der Markt für Gründungskapital vor allem bei der Finanzierung innovativer Gründungen versagt. Eine mögliche Lösung des Finanzierungsproblems von Unternehmensgründungen stellt die Bet...

Dieses Kapitel gibt einen Überblick zu wesentlichen Ausprägungen von Gründungsgeschehen und Marktdynamik in Deutschland. Dabei wird auf Probleme der empirischen Erfassung von Gründungen und unternehmerischer Selbstständigkeit eingegangen. Der empirische Überblick über das Gründungsgeschehen umfasst sowohl die zeitliche Entwicklung von Gründungen un...

Der Begriff Entrepreneurship steht für Eigenschaften und Handlungsweisen, die dynamisches Unternehmertum kennzeichnen. Konkret geht es dabei um Kreativität, Innovation, unternehmerische Initiative und das Eingehen ökonomischer Wagnisse. Da diese Charakteristika von Entrepreneurship vor allem mit neuen und jungen Unternehmen in Verbindung gebracht w...

Ausgangspunkt dieses Kapitels ist ein Überblick über mögliche Wirkungen von Unternehmensgründungen auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung. Grundlegend ist dabei die Unterscheidung von direkten und indirekten Effekten. Darauf aufbauend wird ein Überblick über die empirischen Befunde zu den Wachstumswirkungen von Gründungen gegeben. Dabei wird insbesond...

Gegenstand dieses Kapitels sind die Ziele und gestalterischen Möglichkeiten der Entrepreneurship-Politik. Dabei werden die wirtschaftspolitischen Implikationen der Entrepreneurship-Forschung sowie die Erfahrungen mit verschiedenen Maßnahmen zur Förderung von Entrepreneurship diskutiert. Ein Schwerpunkt der Betrachtung liegt bei der Förderung qualit...

Es werden die wesentlichen Entwicklungsprobleme von neu gegründeten Unternehmen behandelt. Im Zentrum der Betrachtung stehen die Verweildauer im Markt sowie die Beschäftigungsentwicklung. Ausgangspunkt sind die besonderen Probleme in der Gründungsphase von Unternehmen. Aufbauend auf einem Überblick über die Beschäftigungsentwicklung von Gründungsko...

Dieses Kapitel behandelt die Erfolgsfaktoren und damit auch die Scheiterursachen von Unternehmensgründungen. Dabei geht es zunächst um Einkommen und Zufriedenheit von Selbstständigen im Vergleich zu abhängig Beschäftigten. Daran anschließend wird ein Überblick über Hypothesen und empirische Ergebnisse zum Erfolg von Unternehmensgründungen gegeben....

Im Modell des Occupational Choice (Kap. 4) kommt den unternehmerischen Fähigkeiten einer Person die Schlüsselrolle für die Wahl der Erwerbsform zu. In diesem Kapitel wird erläutert, worin unternehmerische Fähigkeiten bestehen und welche Faktoren zu ihrer Herausbildung beitragen. Behandelt werden insbesondere die für eine erfolgreiche Gründung erfor...

Dieses Kapitel erläutert den Wesensinhalt von Entrepreneurship, stellt verschiedene in diesem Zusammenhang relevante Begriffe vor und zeigt wichtige Dimensionen des Themas auf. Dabei werden verschiedene Arten von Entrepreneurship und einige wesentliche Wirkungen von Entrepreneurship auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung erläutert. Abschließend wird e...

Dieses Kapitel gibt einen Überblick über die wesentlichen Determinanten der Gründungstätigkeit, deren Kenntnis eine wichtige Voraussetzung für effektive Maßnahmen der Gründungsförderung darstellt. Ausgehend vom Zusammenhang zwischen individuellen Charakteristika einer Person und ihrer Gründungsneigung, wird zunächst auf die die institutionellen Rah...

Dieses Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit demografischen Merkmalen und den Berufsverläufen von Gründern. Dabei geht es zunächst um das Alter von Gründern, um Unterschiede in der Gründungsneigung zwischen Männern und Frauen sowie um Besonderheiten der Gründungsaktivitäten von Migranten. Weitere Themen sind die Standortwahl von Gründungen, Gründungen aus A...

Das Kapitel behandelt die Theorie des Occupational Choice, mit der zu erklären versucht wird, wieso jemand als Unternehmer tätig ist, während andere in abhängiger Beschäftigung oder Arbeitslosigkeit bleiben. Dabei wird ein einfaches formales Grundmodell abgeleitet, das den Ausgangpunkt für diverse Erweiterungen bildet.

We investigate the reasons for the pronounced regional differences of new business formation after the transformation from a centrally planned system to a market economy in East Germany. Relatively high start-up rates are found in regions that had a well-qualified workforce and a relatively high share of self-employment left over at the end of the...

A region's present-day economic performance can be deeply anchored in historical factors. We provide the first systematic evidence of a deep imprinting effect in the context of Roman rule in the southwestern part of Germany nearly 2,000 years ago. Our analysis reveals that regions in the former Roman part of Germany show a stronger entrepreneurship...

There is a widely held belief that agglomeration economies encourage significantly more successful and productive innovation activities. Based on this belief some scholars even suggest that policies designed to stimulate innovation in non-urban areas are ineffective and a waste of resources. Investigating the geographic concentration of patented in...

Psychological characteristics are significant for various stages of the entrepreneurial process on both individual and group levels. Looking into the ‘psychological context’ in entrepreneurship, we review and define the field, explore the role of regional and country-level entrepreneurial personality and new trends in the geography of entrepreneuri...

Zusammenfassung Ostdeutsche Regionen, die zum Ende der DDR-Zeit einen relativ hohen Besatz an privaten Unternehmen und ein hohes Qualifikationsniveau der Beschäftigten aufwiesen, haben den abrupten Übergang zur Marktwirtschaft vor mehr als 30 Jahren relativ gut bewältigt. Insbesondere sind diese Regionen durch intensive Gründungsaktivitäten geprägt...

Popular theories claim that innovation activities should be located in large cities because of more favorable environmental conditions that are absent in smaller cities or peripheral areas. Germany provides a counterexample to such theories. We argue that a major reason behind the geography of innovation in Germany is the country’s pronounced legac...

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected not only incumbent firms, but also the emergence of start-ups. This paper investigates and analyzes the pandemic's effect on new business formation, as well as business exits and insolvencies, in Germany. We find that the overall level of business registrations slightly decreased during the first year of the...

What characterizes regions where right-wing populist parties are relatively successful? A prominent hypothesis proposed in recent literature claims that places that are "left behind" or "do not matter" are a breeding ground for the rise of populism. We reexamine this hypothesis by analyzing the rise of populism in Germany. Our results suggest that...

Tools for Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) development to assess at which territorial level innovation is concentrated and how innovation systems compare across regions and sectors remain scarce. The triple helix indicator is a data-driven tool that can serve in RIS3 development to assess synergy in innovation systems based on readily available...

This paper analyzes the role of different types of institutions, such as entrepreneurship-facilitating entry conditions, labor market regulations, quality of government, and perception of corruption for individual well-being among self-employed and paid employed individuals. Well-being is operationalized by job and life satisfaction of individuals...

Der Begriff Entrepreneurship steht für unternehmerische Initiative, Kreativität, Innovation und das Eingehen ökonomischer Wagnisse. Er bezeichnet diejenigen Formen von Unternehmertum, die eine zentrale Triebkraft für wirtschaftliche Entwicklung darstellen. Dabei ist der Fokus auf Unternehmensgründungen und junge Unternehmen gerichtet. Das Buch beha...

We investigate how initial conditions that existed in East Germany at the end of the socialist regime impact regional development during the turbulent shock transition to a market economic system. Our investigation spans a period of almost 30 years. Both the self-employment rate (an indication of the existence of a pre-socialist entrepreneurial tra...

We investigate the reasons for the pronounced regional differences of new business formation after the transformation from a socialist planned system to a market economy in East Germany. Relatively high start-up rates are found in regions that had a well-qualified workforce and a relatively high share of remaining self-employed at the end of the so...

We investigate the ‘fluidity’, i.e., entry and exit of inventors, as well as changes of their relationships in nine German regions. The levels of entry and exit of inventors are rather high and most links among inventors are only short term. Fluidity of inventors and links leads to some fragmentation of the regional inventor networks but does not s...

Der Aufsatz erörtert Ausmaß und Ursachen der immer noch bestehenden wirtschaftlichen Unterschiede zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland. Ausgehend von der Lage nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wir die Entwicklung der ostdeutschen Wirtschaft bis zur Wiedervereinigung im Jahr 1990 beschrieben und der Transformationsprozess in den neuen Ländern seit der Wende...

We investigate how major historical shocks affect regional trajectories of economic activity. To this end, we conduct a comparative analysis of the development of entrepreneurship in East and West Germany after World War II. The introduction of an anti-entrepreneurial socialist economy in East Germany in 1949, and the subsequent transformation to a...

In vielen Regionen ist das Niveau unternehmerischer Selbständigkeit über längere Zeiträume sehr persistent. Diese Persistenz zeigt sich auch dann, wenn die regionale Wirtschaft drastischen Änderungen der wirtschaftlich-gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen ausgesetzt war. Eine Erklärung für diesen Befund besteht darin, dass ein hohes Niveau an unter...

In this chapter, we outline a reform strategy to promote a more entrepreneurial society in Germany. Germany has developed a successful model of capitalism in which high productivity growth is driven by on-the-job learning and firm-specific skill accumulation. The economy is rooted in a strong and regionally embedded Mittelstand, which supports an e...

We investigate whether the Roman presence in the southern part of Germany nearly 2,000 years ago had a deep imprinting effect with long run consequences on a broad spectrum of measures ranging from present-day personality profiles to a number of socioeconomic outcomes and why. Today's populations living in the former Roman part of Germany score ind...