Historical roots of entrepreneurship in different regional contexts—the case of Poland.

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. Plain English Summary: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]