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How does distance to urban centres influence necessity and opportunity‐based firm start‐ups?
Author(s) -
Lavesson Niclas
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
papers in regional science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1435-5957
pISSN - 1056-8190
DOI - 10.1111/pirs.12289
Subject(s) - urban agglomeration , closeness , competition (biology) , economic geography , economies of agglomeration , business , geography , economic growth , economics , mathematical analysis , ecology , mathematics , biology
Abstract This paper seeks to understand how distance to urban centres influences necessity and opportunity‐based firm start‐ups. The results show that closeness to urban centres is not necessarily beneficial for firm start‐ups. On the contrary, regions further away from urban centres of any size experience more firm start‐ups. One explanation of this result is that regions experience spatial protection from urban competition. However, regions located further away from larger‐sized urban centres experience less firm start‐ups due to such remoteness. One explanation of this finding is that remote regions cannot access the agglomeration benefits that larger cities offer. This supports the view that rural regions draw on urban resources but only on those from larger agglomerations.