The wealth of regions geographic concentration , entrepreneurship and regional growth

Abstract: This thesis consists of three individual essays and an introductory chapter. The essays contribute to the current vein of empirical literature on economic geography and entrepreneurship. In two of the three essays the empirical analysis is preformed using panel data cross tabulated over years, regions and industries; whereas the third essay use data distributed over years and regions. The first essay implements a measure of geographic concentration and investigates the extent of concentration in Swedish industries and the relationship to economic growth specified as labour productivity. The second essay focuses on the composition of industry concentration. Using a similar measure as in the first essay the co-location of Swedish industries are investigated as well as the relationship to economic growth. The third essay explores the connection between entrepreneurship and regional growth – measured as employment growth – in Sweden and the U.S.