Cite as:
Anyadike-Danes M, Hart M, 2006, "The impact of sector, specialisation, and space on business birth rates in the United Kingdom: a challenge for policy?" Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 24(6) 815 – 826
Download citation data in RIS format

The impact of sector, specialisation, and space on business birth rates in the United Kingdom: a challenge for policy?

Michael Anyadike-Danes, Mark Hart

Received 13 June 2005; in revised form 7 November 2005

Abstract. The authors use VAT data to shed light on the pattern of variation in business birth rates across the local authority areas of the United Kingdom. They seek to provide policymakers with a more realistic assessment of the extent to which their interventions might be able to affect the rate of new-business formation. An empirical investigation of the separate impacts of sector, specialisation, and space, suggests that the share of business-services businesses in the business stock seems to play the largest role in accounting for the spatial distribution of the business birth rate across the United Kingdom; and that this share is significantly influenced by the spatial pattern of population density. Policies which involve setting ‘targets’ for business birth rates need to take the local ‘context’ into account and, perhaps more importantly, aspirations may have to change: it seems unlikely that stimulation of business birth rates should realistically be expected to close the ‘enterprise gap’ between different parts of the country.

Restricted material:

 Full-text PDF size: 440 Kb

 References  21 references, 7 with DOI links ()

Your computer (IP address: 38.107.191.106) has not been recognised as being on a network authorised to view the full text or references of this article. Please contact your serials librarian (subscriptions information).