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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 results suggest that high vote shares of populist parties are associated with the long-term decline of a region's relative welfare, which goes beyond a lifespan of people inhabiting such “left behind” places. Moreover, we are able to show that a place-based collective memory about past prosperity plays a crucial role in shaping present resentment. Finally, we find the education level of the regional population to be an important channel through which the collective memory about the past translates into populism support today.

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 communist period. This also holds for high-tech manufacturing start-ups. Based on our conclusion that policy should account for these initial regional conditions, we use a measure of the regional knowledge base and self-employment at the end of the communist period to introduce a classification of regions.

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 general qualification of the workforce) have a strong positive effect on regional development. Our results show that entrepreneurship and knowledge are key regional resources for mastering disruptive historical shocks.

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 Office/DPMA). The core database covers the years 1950–1990 and contains 24 variables with manually cleaned and processed information on a total of 261,822 unique patents of the GDR.

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 regions of Poland, a country that experienced different types of disruptive developments. In contrast to previous studies on other countries, we do not find a persistent effect of the general level of historical private sector self-employment. There is, however, a pronounced positive relationship between high regional levels of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in the 1920s and current start-up activity in general, even in areas where large parts of the local population were displaced after World War II. We find that the magnitude of this effect is independent of the mobility and an exchange of the local population. Our main conclusion is that the historical regional knowledge stock, as reflected by knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, can be an important and stable historical root of modern entrepreneurship despite disruptive historical shocks and population discontinuities. Historical knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship is a major root of current entrepreneurship despite disruptive historical shocks and population replacement. We draw on Poland’s turbulent history since the 1920s to investigate the regional roots of today’s entrepreneurship. Compared to previous studies, we do not find a persistent effect of the general level of historical private sector entrepreneurship. Only historically high levels of high-quality entrepreneurship are positively related to current start-up activity, even in areas where much of the local population has been displaced. This suggests that the historical regional knowledge stock can be an important historical root of modern entrepreneurship despite disruptive historical shocks and population discontinuities. Therefore, entrepreneurship policy should seek to stimulate the regional knowledge stock and the creation of high-quality start-ups in a region. Examples of successful current and historical local entrepreneurs can provide important roadmaps on how to become successful entrepreneurs and potentially create a place-based collective memory.

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 glance—contradicting pattern, we investigate processes at the intermediate network level. Our analysis draws upon co-patenting data for the entire population of West German inventors in the field of laser technology research from the onset of the technology in the early 1960s over a period of 45 years. Our findings suggest that the key factor for maintaining structural stability of networks is that directly linked partners of inventors with stabilizing properties—so-called ‘key players’—take over this function in a subsequent period. We show that processes at the intermediate network level provide new insights on the co-existence of micro fluidity and macro stability in complex adaptive systems.

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 in 32 European countries measured by data from EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). We find that institutions never affected both occupational groups in opposite ways. Our findings indicate that labor market institutions do not play an important role for well-being. The results suggest that fostering an entrepreneurial society in Europe is a welfare-enhancing strategy that benefits both, the self-employed and paid employees.

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 remote and rural areas. Germany provides a clear counterexample to such theories. We argue that a main force behind the geography of innovation in Germany is the country's federal tradition that has shaped the settlement structure, the geographic distribution of universities and public research institutions, as well as local access to finance. Additional factors that may play a role in this respect are the system of education and the tax treatment of inheriting a business. We demonstrate the long-lasting effect of the historical political structure and distribution of knowledge sources on innovation activities today. We conclude that historical factors that shape the settlement structure and location of knowledge sources are of key importance for the geographic location of innovation activities.

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 the strict anti-entrepreneurial policies prevalent during the Soviet regime do not have a long-run negative effect on self-employment in East Germany. Quite to the contrary, self-employment in East Germany today is higher than before German separation. This finding cannot be explained by necessity self-employment. Our analysis suggests that current differences in self-employment between East and West Germany are pre-dominantly a result of the sudden shock transformation that occurred with reunification, rather than the outcome of four decades of anti-entrepreneurial policies and ideology.

Purpose: The craniometrics of head circumference (HC) and ventricular size are part of the clinical assessment of infants with hydrocephalus and are often utilized in conjunction with other clinical and radiological parameters to determine the success of treatment. We aimed to assess the effect of endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) and shunting on craniometric measurements during the follow-up of a cohort of infants with symptomatic triventricular hydrocephalus secondary to aqueductal stenosis. Methods: We performed a post hoc analysis of data from the International Infant Hydrocephalus Study (IIHS)-a prospective, multicenter study of infants (< 24 months old) with hydrocephalus from aqueductal stenosis who were treated with either an ETV or shunt. During various stages of a 5-year follow-up period, the following craniometrics were measured: HC, HC centile, HC z-score, and frontal-occipital horn ratio (FOR). Data were compared in an analysis of covariance, adjusting for baseline variables including age at surgery and sex. Results: Of 158 enrolled patients, 115 underwent an ETV, while 43 received a shunt. Both procedures led to improvements in the mean HC centile position and z-score, a trend which continued until the 5-year assessment point. A similar trend was noted for FOR which was measured at 12 months and 3 years following initial treatment. Although the values were consistently higher for ETV compared with shunt, the differences in HC value, centile, and z-score were not significant. ETV was associated with a significantly higher FOR compared with shunting at 12 months (0.52 vs 0.44; p = 0.002) and 3 years (0.46 vs 0.38; p = 0.03) of follow-up. Conclusion: ETV and shunting led to improvements in HC centile, z-score, and FOR measurements during long-term follow-up of infants with hydrocephalus secondary to aqueductal stenosis. Head size did not significantly differ between the treatment groups during follow-up, however ventricle size was greater in those undergoing ETV when measured at 1 and 3 years following treatment.

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 inventions in 14 developed countries, we find that in most countries patenting is geographically dispersed with considerable shares of patented inventions in areas other than large cities. South Korea and the US are two extreme outliers where patenting is highly concentrated in some large cities. Also, there is no general tendency that inventors in large cities are more productive, in terms of filing patents, when compared to inventors in rural areas. We conclude that while the agglomeration economies found in large cities may offer advantages for innovation activities, the extent of these advantages is not significant, and popular theories overemphasize the importance of large cities for innovation activities.

We live in turbulent times, but when has this not been the case? The history of regions and the ‘regional studies project’ has always had at its core concerns relating to new and increased social a...

Focusing on ‘evolution and co-evolution of regional innovation processes’, this special issue addresses a highly topical subject. The contributions cover a number of distinct but complement...

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 significantly affect other network characteristics. Entry of new inventors and growing numbers of links are positively related to the performance of the respective regional innovation system.

We investigate persistence and change of regional new business formation in West Germany over a period of 30 years. Our indicator is the position of a region in the national ranking. We confirm the role of several sources of this persistence, namely, persistence in regional determinants of new business formation and path dependence in new business formation activity. The results for the role of a distinct regional culture of entrepreneurship are, however, ambiguous. Main factors that are related to changes in the national ranking are the employment share in small businesses, the share of manufacturing employment and a relatively low regional wage level. R&D activities are also conducive for new business formation but become effective only with a time lag.

We investigate the relationship between new business formation and the level of competitive pressure that is perceived by manufacturing incumbent establishments. The perceived pressure of competition is stronger when entry in the respective industry is higher. This relationship holds not only for start-ups that are located in the same region of the incumbent, but also for start-ups across all regions of Germany. Additionally, we find that particularly small, low-productivity incumbents—as well as incumbents that are located in highly populated regions—are more likely to associate new business formation with high levels of competitive pressure. We also identify other incumbent characteristics that influence the overall level of perceived competitive pressure.