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We use the locational pattern of clubs in four major professional football leagues in Europe to test the causal effect of changes in premier league membership on regional employment and output growth at the NUTS 3 level. We rely on the relegation mode of the classical round-robin tournament in the European model of sport to develop a regression-discontinuity design. The results indicate small and significant negative short-term effects on regional employment and output in the sports-related economic sector when clubs are relegated from the premier division of the respective football league. In addition, we find small negative effects on overall regional employment growth. However, total regional gross value added remains unaffected, indicating that in the main it is the less productive jobs that disappear in the short-term.

The majority of empirical studies make use of the assumption of stable preferences in searching for a relationship between risk attitude and the decision to become and stay an entrepreneur. Yet empirical evidence on this relationship is limited. In this paper, we show that entry into entrepreneurship itself plays a decisive role in shaping risk preferences. We find that becoming self-employed is indeed associated with a relative increase in risk attitudes, an increase that is quantitatively large and significant even after controlling for individual characteristics, different employment status, and duration of entrepreneurship. The findings suggest that studies assuming that risk attitudes are stable over time suffer from reverse causality; risk attitudes do not remain stable over time, and individual preferences change endogenously.

This article analyses how regional employment growth in Germany is affected by related variety, unrelated variety and the functions a region performs in the production process. Following the related variety literature, we argue that regions benefit from the existence of related activities that facilitate economic development. However, we argue that the sole reliance of related variety on standard industrial classifications remains debatable. Hence, we offer estimations for establishing that conceptual progress can indeed be made when a focus for analysis goes beyond solely considering industries. We develop an industry-function based approach of related and unrelated variety. Our findings suggest that related variety only in combination with a high functional specialization of the region facilitates regional growth in Germany. Additionally, also unrelated variety per se fails to wield influences affecting development of regions. It is rather unrelated, but functionally proximate variety in the groups 'White Collar' and 'Blue Collar Workers' positively affects regional employment growth. -- Related variety ; unrelated variety ; regional functions ; functional specialization

Abstract
We conduct a discrete choice experiment to investigate how the location of a firm in a rural or urban region affects the perceived job attractiveness for university students and graduates and, therewith, contributes to the rural–urban divide. We characterize the attractiveness of a location based on several dimensions (social life, public infrastructure and connectivity) and vary job design and contractual characteristics of the job. We find that job offers from companies in rural areas are generally considered less attractive, regardless of the attractiveness of the region. The negative perception is particularly pronounced among persons of urban origin and singles. In contrast, for individuals with partners and kids this preference is less pronounced. High-skilled individuals who originate from rural areas have no specific regional preference at all.

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag analysiert regionale Innovationssysteme in den Regionen Deutschlands, die aufgrund der Gesetzeslage bis zum Jahr 2038 den Ausstieg aus der thermischen Verwertung der Braunkohle vollzogen haben müssen. Viele dieser Regionen weisen ohnehin Strukturschwächen auf. Es stellt sich die Frage, ob und wie regionale Strukturpolitik dabei helfen kann, die Transformation der regionalen Wirtschaft zu meistern. Ein guter Anknüpfungspunkt besteht darin, regionale Innovationssysteme in ihrem Wandel zu stärken. Im Vergleich der drei betroffenen Reviere zeigt sich insbesondere für die Lausitz, dass bisher die Hochschulen insgesamt wenig vernetzt sind und Kontakte zur regionalen Wirtschaft unterentwickelt sind. Eine Stärkung von Innovationskooperationen kann daher zusätzliche Impulse für die regionale Entwicklung der Reviere liefern.

Regionale Cluster erfreuen sich seit geraumer Zeit großen Interesses von Seiten der Wissenschaft sowie der Regionalpolitik. An sie wird die Hoffnung auf die Steigerung der Gründungsrate, der regionalen Innovationsfähigkeit und der betrieblichen Produktivität geknüpft, was im Endeffekt zur Erhöhung der regionalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit beitragen soll. Wenngleich auch in Mitteldeutschland (Sachsen-Anhalt, Sachsen, Thüringen) vielfältige Cluster existieren (z. B. in der Biotechnologie, der Solartechnik, der Chemieindustrie, der Forstwirtschaft, der Mikroelektronik, der Nanotechnologien und der optischen Technologien), mangelt es bislang an genaueren Erkenntnissen über deren Aufbau und Entwicklungsstadien, die Ausgestaltung und Wirksamkeit der aktuellen Clusterförderung sowie die zu erwartende Entwicklung der bisherigen Strukturen. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es Ziel des Tagungsbandes, die in Mitteldeutschland bestehenden Cluster zu identifizieren sowie hinsichtlich ihres Aufbaus und Entwicklungspotenzials zu analysieren, bisherige Maßnahmen der Clusterförderung in ihrer Wirkung kritisch zu beleuchten und zur Erweiterung der zugrunde liegenden konzeptionellen Basis beizutragen. Der Tagungsband vereint dazu die theoriegeleiteten Beiträge und Fallstudien aus der Clusterforschung sowie Erkenntnisse aus der Clusterförderungspraxis, die am 25. und 26. November 2010 im Rahmen des gemeinschaftlich vom Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH) und der Fachgruppe Wirtschaftsgeographie der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg organisierten Workshops 'Cluster in Mitteldeutschland - Strukturen, Potenziale, Förderung' in Halle (Saale) präsentiert worden sind .

Research on the spatial distribution of economic activity has mainly focussed on identifying conditions that sustain industrial clusters, as they are perceived to be the locus of regional economic growth. Taking this static perspective, today only little is known about the factors that facilitate the emergence of spatial structures in new industries. To achieve deeper insights in these formation processes 'theory must explain how information and resources for entrepreneurial activities come to be disproportionally massed in some places and some times'. Within this context, recent developments in institutional economic geography underline the role of social movements contributing to institutional change and government action, thus affecting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunity. As these institutions and government actions have a spatial dimension, they can induce Windows of Locational Opportunity (WLO) supporting the evolution of spatial patterns of new industries. Yet, little research has examined the role of institutional change and government action in the evolution of new industries or entrepreneurial opportunity. Regarding the energy sector, the importance of institutional change seems to hold for effects of environmental movements, as they were able to give an increased awareness of pre-existing technological solutions (esp. alternative sources of energy). Changes within this field - in earlier days as reaction to oil crises - can nowadays be seen as reactions in answer to climate change caused by emissions of CO2. This calls for a rapid rate of diffusion of CO2 neutral energy technologies so that the shift towards renewable energies results in a series of technological discontinuities in the energy field. The objective of this paper is to explain the evolution of spatial structures of one special type of renewable energies in Germany, the photovoltaic industry (PV). In a first step we demonstrate how environmental movements contributed to institutional change and government action leading to changes in the legal and regulative structure in Germany. We describe how these changes opened up a Window of Locational Opportunity and therefore combine the approach of the WLO concept with that of entrepreneurial opportunity.

The German government provides discretionary investment grants to structurally weak regions to reduce regional disparities. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits an exogenous discrete jump in the probability of receiving investment grants to identify the causal effects of the investment grant on regional outcomes. We find positive effects for regional gross value-added and productivity growth, but no effects for employment and gross wage growth.

Die Wirtschaft in den Industrieländern unterliegt einem ständigen Anpassungsdruck. Wichtige aktuelle Treiber des Strukturwandels sind vor allem die Globalisierung, der technologische Fortschritt (insbesondere durch Digitalisierung und Automatisierung), die Demographie (durch Alterung und Schrumpfung der Bevölkerung) und der Klimawandel. Von diesem Anpassungsdruck sind jedoch die Regionen in Deutschland sehr unterschiedlich betroffen. Regionalpolitik verfolgt das Ziel, Regionen bei der Bewältigung des Strukturwandels zu unterstützen. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt dabei auf Regionen, die ohnehin durch Strukturschwächen gekennzeichnet sind. Die aktuelle Regionalförderung in Deutschland basiert im Wesentlichen auf der Förderung von Investitionen von Betrieben und Kommunen. Die Evaluierung dieser Programme muss integraler Bestandteil der Regionalpolitik sein - schließlich stellt sich immer die Frage nach einer alternativen Verwendung knapper öffentlicher Mittel. Eine Pilotstudie für Sachsen-Anhalt zeigt, dass die im Rahmen der Regionalpolitik gewährten Investitionszuschüsse einen positiven Effekt auf Beschäftigung und Investitionen der geförderten Betriebe haben; bei den Investitionen allerdings nur für die Dauer des Projekts. Effekte der Förderung auf Umsatz und Produktivität von Betrieben in Sachsen-Anhalt waren nicht nachweisbar.

The German government provides discretionary investment grants to structurally weak regions to reduce regional disparities. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits an exogenous discrete jump in the probability of receiving investment grants, to identify the causal effects of the investment grant on regional outcomes. We find positive effects for regional gross value-added and productivity growth, but no effects for employment and gross wage growth.

The German government provides discretionary investment grants to structurally weak regions to reduce regional disparities. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits an exogenous discrete jump in the probability of receiving investment grants to identify the causal effects of the investment grant on regional outcomes. We find positive effects for regional gross value-added and productivity growth, but no effects for employment and gross wage growth.