Local Production Systems, Entrepreneurship, and Regional Development: Theoretical Arguements and Empirical Evidence from Argentina

ROCHA, H.; REYNOLDS, PAUL; DONATO, VICENTE; HAEDO, CHRISTIAN

Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Reseach

Babson College

Lugar: Massachusett; Año: 2004 p. 1 - 18

0121-5051

This paper is about the impact of different types of local production systems (LPS) on entrepreneurship and regional development. This topic is especially relevant for Latin American countries, which after two decades of macroeconomic liberalisation reforms face the opportunity to develop endogenous development strategies. However, although the increasing interest in regional factors affecting founding rates, research on LPS, entrepreneurship and regional development is still scarce. Additionally, different LPS such as industrial agglomerations and districts show specific causal mechanisms to foster entrepreneurship and regional development. Finally, to uncover these different causal mechanisms it is necessary to make comparisons within and not within LPS. Studies focussing on new firms within LPS do not allow assessing the real impact of those systems because there is no information about the impact of similar firms located elsewhere. This paper contributes to this research agenda providing a theoretical model and an empirical research to analyse the impact of different LPS on entrepreneurship and regional development. The paper aims at answering four research questions: (1) Is entrepreneurship higher within LPS than not within LPS? (2) Are there significant differences in entrepreneurship across different LPS such as industrial agglomerations and industrial districts? (3) Do LPS matter to regional development? (4) What are the implications of the answer to the previous questions for academics and policy makers?