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County-level location patterns ofINC5000 companies provide one map of American entrepreneurship and innovativeness, and understanding the local factors associated with these firms’ emergence is important for stimulating regional economic growth and innovation. We draw on the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to motivate our regression model, and augment this theory with additional regional features that have been found to be important in the firm location literature. Zero-inflated negative binomial regressions indicate that these firms exist in counties with larger average establishment size, higher educational attainment and more natural amenities. Income growth, a mix of higher paying industries, and more banks per capita are associated with a smaller presence of these types of firms, all else equal. We conclude that the local conditions favouring high-growth firms are likely to be different from those favouring new firms in general, and that these conditions differ significantly in urban and rural areas and by industrial sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustained surge in self-employment since 2000 has largely gone unnoticed by policy makers and economic developers. Here the authors document this surge and identify variables associated with expanding self-employment. Results provide mixed evidence about the importance of capital access to self-employment growth, but reveal that different approaches are needed in different county types depending on their proximity to metro areas and population size, if the goal is to increase future rural self-employment rates. In all county types, the initial share of self-employed predicts self-employment growth, underscoring the importance of a culture favoring entrepreneurship and path dependence. Self-employment earnings and educational attainment also play significant roles, as does the ethnic diversity of the population. Population density matters in both rural and urban counties, but less so within individual rural–urban continuum code categories. State policy, especially labor market freedom, has important effects on self-employment in most county types and periods studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite the surging interest in entrepreneurship as an economic development strategy, studies of the independent relationship between proprietorship formations and job growth are virtually nonexistent. We find that self-employment or proprietorship rates are associated with faster job growth in the wage-and-salary sector, and the effect is statistically significant. The relative magnitude of this effect varies with the business cycle, being stronger during economic expansions and weaker during contractions. Further, the effect is stronger in metropolitan than in non-metropolitan counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State and local governments increasingly look to entrepreneurship as a means of stimulating economic growth. However, can the public sector play a role in promoting entrepreneurial activity--and if so, what should that role be ? The authors investigate independent effects of financial and human entrepreneurial capital and ideas on entrepreneurial activity in the 50 states. Financial entrepreneurial capital has an inverse U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial activity, suggesting there are limits to using increasing amounts of financial capital to stimulate entrepreneurship, all else being equal. The authors rank each state in terms of predicted and actual entrepreneurial activity scores and propose a preliminary measure of the entrepreneurial "climate" of each state. Although most states are ranked near where casual analysis might place them, the authors find that others have predicted values that differ significantly from actual values. This suggests that climate may be an important factor in stimulating entrepreneurial activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]