Välkommen till seminariet med Marcin Rataj, postdoktor vid Institutionen för geografi, Umeå universitet.
Social capital and regional determinants of senior entrepreneurship
Abstract
There is significant body of literature indicating that the relation between age and performance as well as propensity of becoming entrepreneur follows an inverse U-shape pattern (Parker 2018). Still, recent research points out that this effect might be heterogeneous across regional settings. As emphasized by Mayer and Leick (2018) the opportunities and challenges associated with old age entrepreneurship depend on the regional context. Specifically, in case of Sweden Backman and Karlsson (2018) show that older individuals are increasingly becoming entrepreneurs around the retirement age and the peak of probability of becoming self-employed takes place at much older age in the most rural municipalities. This pattern might be to large degree attributed to necessity-push factors such as limited employment options combined with incentives for longer professional activity built-in into the pension system (Backman and Karlsson 2018).
We argue that the pattern of older-age peak in self-employment observed in rural settings might reflect not only necessity-push factors, but might be also to some degree a result of alternative opportunity-pull mechanisms that favour senior entrepreneurship in rural regions. This mechanism might rely on particular significance of regional social capital in the rural context. As emphasized by Parker (2018) the important feature of social capital is that it might play substitutional role i.e. compensate for other missing resources. This is because it facilitates the interaction between people and therefore shortens the social distances between individuals with relevant knowledge and resources. In this regard Eriksson and Rataj (2019) showed that this mechanism might be at work also at regional level and therefore allow compensation for other missing resources in case of rural economy.
This project investigates how Local Social Capital (LSC) is related to performance of senior entrepreneurs (individuals who are 55 and older in the moment of starting a company) compared to younger entrepreneurial individuals. The performance is measured by analysis of exit and employment growth of their newly established companies. To test our research hypotheses we use high quality Swedish register data that allows to link individual and firm level data. This longitudinal microdata allow to control for entrepreneur’s situation before establishing the firm. These data also let researchers follow how changes in entrepreneur’s access to resources change the processes of firm’s establishment, firm’s performance over time and the risk that a firm fails to survive.
Välkommen att delta i Zoom Seminariet ges på engelska och i hybridform, Rum för lärande och via Zoom. https://umu.zoom.us/j/66229427566