The impact of industry structure on start-up activities - An analysis for West German planning regions 1983-1997

In our contribution we analyse business start-ups in West German planning r egions for the 1983-97 period. The data was generated on the basis of socia l insurance statistics. During that period start-up activities have increas ed in most of the regions with a rising share of new service firms. Accordi ng to a shift-share analysis the impact of a regions' industrial structure on the number of start-ups is, on average, rather low. However, for some re gions the calculated structural and locational impact is rather strong indi cating a significant potential effect of policy measures aimed at stimulati ng start-up activities.