the shadow of death analysing the pre exit productivity of portuguese manufacturing firms the pre exiting productivity profile of mature firms relative to survivors is examined along with an evaluation of how productivity affects the probability of exit along various dimensions an empirical approach based on an unbalanced panel of portuguese manufacturing firms covering a 10 year period is used the findings confirm that market selection forces low productivity firms to exit but there is also evidence that a sizeable portion of low productivity firms do not shut down conversely there is a non negligible fraction of high productivity firms that do actually close consistent with some key theoretical predictions our analysis reveals that exiting firms have a falling productivity level over a number of years prior to exit finally the results from the survival model show that both small firms and ones with low productivity are relatively much more likely to exit the market industry and macro environment are also found to have a non negligible role on the exit of mature firms

submarkets and the evolution of market structure we construct a model of industry evolution in which the central force for change is the creation and destruction of submarkets firms expand when they are able to exploit new opportunities that arrive in the form of submarkets they contract and ultimately exit when the submarkets in which they operate are destroyed this simple framework can transparently explain a wide range of well known regularities about industry dynamics most notably the subtle relationships between size age growth and survival data on the laser industry where submarkets are prominent further illustrate the ability of the model to explain distinctive patterns in the evolution of industries and firms

competition and entrepreneurs human capital in small business longevity and growth abstract an analysis of data on a sample of small scale manufacturers shows that a business is less likely to survive and grows slower the smaller the average price cost margin in the industry in which it operates the probability of survival is also smaller in import competing industries so is the mean growth rate among survivors we interpret this as evidence that small businesses are less likely to survive and grow slower in industries where the pressure of competition is stronger given competitive pressure and establishment characteristics the probability of business survival and the expected growth rate conditional on survival both increase with entrepreneurial human capital this is in the sense that the probability of business survival increases with the number of years of schooling and the number of years of business experience of the entrepreneur as does the expected growth rate conditional on survival these results are consistent with another finding that unobservable influences on business

an explanation of the life span of new french firms in contrast to previous studies on firm survival which tend to focus on features related to the structure of the firms and their area of activity our aim here is to widen the perspective usually adopted in the field taking into account a larger and more qualitative set of variables among these variables features related to the individual characteristics of the entrepreneur to the context of entrepreneurship and to the insertion in entrepreneurial networks are significant to explain the life span of new firms the empirical material is drawn from two surveys which provide detailed data about a group of new firms created in france in 1994 and closed down before 1997 or still running in 1997 our empirical approach on qualitative data is based on data analysis methods linear discriminant analysis barycentric discriminant analysis analysis of variance according to the characteristics of the entrepreneur the main explanatory factors for the survival of new firms are the fact that they are entrepreneurs who have taken over firms that they have acquired during their previous occupational activity an experience in the same branch of activity and that they experience a successful integration into the entrepreneurial networks these three factors show that the survival of young firms is indirectly conditioned by the existence of an initial custom by the mastery of a job and by the know how in the entrepreneurial function

strategic investment and timing of entry the authors introduce competition over entry time into a sequential output choice model to show how profit differences will be dissipated this resolves a problem in the standard stackelberg model that the order of moves is exogenously specified yet an earlier position in the order is usually preferred to a later one if capacity costs are not too low the authors solution applies even if firms cannot commit to sell their entire output introducing positive capacity costs slightly modifies the static stackelberg results since endogenous cost asymmetries arise the framework therefore partially rehabilitates the stackelberg model copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

economic failure and the role of plant age and size this paper introduces a large scale administrative panel data set on corporate bankruptcy in germany that allows for an econometric analysis of involuntary exits where previous studies mixed voluntary and involuntary exits approximately 83 of all bankruptcies occur in plants with not more than 10 employees and 61 of all bankrupt plants are not older than 5 years the descriptive statistics and regression analysis indicate substantial negative age dependence with respect to bankruptcy risk but confirm negative size dependence for mature plants only our results corroborate hypotheses stressing increasing capabilities and positional advantage both predicting negative age dependence with respect to bankruptcy risk due to productivity improvements the results are not consistent with the theories explaining age dependence via imprinting or structural inertia

individual and opportunity factors influencing job creation in new firms we build on multiple theoretical perspectives to investigate the unique and joint effects of individual and opportunity level factors affecting job creation in new firms we tested hypotheses using survey data from individuals who transitioned from unemployment to self employment under the auspices of a german public policy program our findings reveal that an entrepreneur s breadth of knowledge has a negative influence on the firm s job creation whereas the entrepreneur s leadership experience has a positive influence however as the sector specific labor requirements of a business opportunity increase both breadth of knowledge and leadership experience allow founders to operate their firms with fewer employees

a note on the relation between size ownership status and plant s closure sunk costs vs strategic size liability abstract in this paper we test both sunk cost and strategic size liability predictions by looking at the exit behavior of a sample of italian manufacturing plants for this purpose we focus on plants size and ownership status in particular we distinguish independent plants from plants that belong to multi unit organizations as to these latter we further distinguish state owned from privately owned plants we also consider the impact upon the likelihood of closure of the size and nationality of the parent firm in addition and contrary to previous empirical work data allow us to control for differences in the cost structure of plants namely we use technology adoption dummies to take into account plants technological heterogeneity

business failure of new firms an empirical analysis using a multiplicative hazards model abstract this paper investigates business failure of new firms using a multiplicative hazards model we estimate the determinants of business failure among new manufacturing firms in tokyo during the period 1986 to 1994 it is found that a new firm without sufficient capital or a sufficient size has a higher risk of business failure it is also found that the new firm tends to have more difficulty surviving in an industry characterized by a high entry rate with respect to the timing of entry the new firm that entered just before or after the collapse of the so called bubble economy has been more likely to fail furthermore we estimate a regression model based not only on age but also on calendar time by using a regression model based on calendar time it is found that the firm s age has been related to business failure

how endogenous risk preferences and sample selection affect analysis of firm survival the roles of selection and endogeneity in measured risk preferences are illustrated using the correlation between risk attitudes and firm survival selection bias occurs when risk attitudes are elicited only from current entrepreneurs so that the risk attitudes of unsuccessful entrepreneurs are excluded from the analysis risk attitudes measured after agents enter entrepreneurship will endogenously reflect business success data on entrepreneurs from the national longitudinal survey of youth 1979 and the panel study of income dynamics shows that when risk attitudes are measured subject to selection and endogeneity mixed or even positive correlations between risk acceptance and the probability of firm exit occur however firm exits fall monotonically with willingness to accept risk when risk preference measures are not subject to selection or endogeneity related to business success

the relationship between firm growth size and age estimates for 100 manufacturing industries this study uses a sample of all firms operating in 100 manufacturing industries to examine some aspects of firm dynamics it finds that firm growth the variability of firm growth and the probability that a firm will fail decrease with firm age it also finds that firm growth decreases at a diminishing rate with firm size even after controlling for the exit of slow growing firms from the sample gibrat s law therefore fails although the severity of the failure decreases with firm size copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

organic farming in scandinavia productivity and market exit abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively measure the change in the productivity of danish organic farming in recent years based on a translog production frontier framework the technical and scale efficiency at farm level is analysed by following a time trends as well as a general index model specification further this study tries to analyse the significance of subsidies for promoting long term growth in organic production by estimating a bootstrapped bivariate probit model with respect to factors influencing the probability of organic market exit the results revealed significant differences in the organic farms technical efficiencies no significant total factor productivity growth and even a slightly negative rate of technical change in the period investigated evidence has been found for a positive relationship between subsidy payments and an increase in farm efficiency technology improvements and a decreasing probability of organic market exit which was also confirmed for off farm income

why chains beget chains an ecological model of firm entry and exit and the evolution of market similarity abstract we construct and analyze a dynamic model of chain growth across multiple markets from an ecological perspective using computational and mathematical techniques our model consists of firms that possess intrinsic qualities and hedonic spatial attributes consumers purchase from firms based upon quality and hedonic distance we find that the existence of chains creates an environment favorable to additional chains in other words chains beget chains we also find that even though creating successful new firms becomes harder over time chaining successful new firms becomes easier both phenomena result from the creation of common niches across markets

survival duration of plants evidence from the us petroleum refining industry abstract this paper presents a duration analysis on the survival of us petroleum refining plants for the 1981 1986 period when the industry as a whole declines in response to the decontrol of crude oil markets the purpose is to examine the duration dependence and determinants of post deregulation plant lifetimes the weibull model with the correction for unobserved individual heterogeneity provides a better fit to the data empirical results show that plant size age regulatory subsidies technology use and multiplant coordination are key determinants of refinery life duration after deregulation in addition major integrated oil companies tend to make timely restructuring via refinery closures and sales the interactive effects of size and technology use and of multiplant coordination and integrated organization are also important to the refinery survival

internet start ups access to the bank loan market evidence from italy the analysis of the bank sector s ability to efficiently fuel the birth of new italian business ventures in internet related services is studied in particular through the specification and the estimate of a series of econometric models this paper aims at investigating which characteristics of a large sample of internet start ups and their relative founders facilitate access to the loan market more precisely the role played by founders human capital as a possible significant signal used by banks to evaluate investment projects is addressed estimation results suggest that highly qualified human resources possessed by internet founders do not represent an important driver for gaining access to bank credit and they do not affect the amount of the incurred debt

creative destruction and human resources discussion about demography of firms and industries is asking not only for the entity of organizations but also for processes of entry and exit changes and shifts in the overall structure of enterprises are very often regarded as reflections of market forces which are leaded by company strategies and their management elites too less attention is paid to some overall trends in which deaths and births of firms are embedded the paper tries to discuss some developments in the structure of the labour force which are regarded as an autonomous interpretation scheme for new occupations markets and firms the secular sectoral transformation towards the service sector is connected to the course of productivity which provides in itself the breeding ground for new organizations analysing long term social and economic changes is one of the necessary perspectives to understand recent trends in economy and society and to arrive at a better understanding of future developments the argument in the paper is a conceptual one which is highlighted by empirical observations evolutionary processes of creative destruction must be understood best by an integrated interdisciplinary approach including different aspects of market formations and socioeconomic dimensions such as labour market trends social stratification issues and life style elements

out of sight but not out of mind why failure to account for left truncation biases research on failure rates we note at least three major issues in entrepreneurship theory that can be clarified by studying the survival chances of new ventures the extent to which entrepreneurs are so constrained by initial founding conditions that they are unable to learn the degree to which heterogeneity and innovative capabilities are lost due to the failure of new ventures and the imprinting effects of new ventures early days on their subsequent development however previous research on these issues has been inconclusive because of problems in research design and data analysis in this paper we shed light on new venture failure rates by assessing the validity and generalizability of previous findings we argue that research using registration data to study new ventures is very likely to generate biased results and that research attempting to track new ventures from a very early stage can still suffer from selection bias due to left truncation using a sample of new ventures from the panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics ii we provide evidence for the extent of such biases we offer a statistical solution to left truncation that can be easily applied in widely used statistical programs

firm spin offs in denmark 1981 2000 patterns of entry and exit abstract this paper adds large sample evidence on the extent to which the likelihood of business failure or success is related to relationships between parent firms and their off spring for this purpose we make use of an exhaustive matched employer employee data set covering the entire danish private sector in years 1981 to 2000 to study firm entry and exit special focus is on spin offs a particular group of small entrants which are founded by groups of persons originating from the same former workplace we estimate a multinomial logit model in order to examine which characteristics of the founders and the parent firms increase the probability of spinning off next we carry out a duration analysis of the subsequent transitions of the spin offs and compare their exit risks with those of other entrant firms which have less strong parent progeny relationships in terms of worker flows

survival of entrepreneurship in spain the aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of survival in entrepreneurship in spain for this purpose a cox proportional hazard model is estimated using information from the continuous working life sample the results show that opportunity entrepreneurs have a higher probability of continuing their entrepreneurial activity than entrepreneurs motivated by other reasons moreover women show a higher survival rate than men in addition a high educational level positively influences survival whilst previous work experience increases the risk of not surviving finally age with a nonlinear influence increases probability of survival but at a decreasing rate the implications of these results are that it should not be encouraged entrepreneurship indiscriminately and authorities should promote entrepreneurial training and help entrepreneurship of people under 30 and over 45 50 years

redefining business success distinguishing between closure and failure new firms are believed to have high closure rates and these closures are believed to be failures but two u s census bureau data sources illustrate that these assumptions may not be justified the business information tracking series bits showed that about half of new employer firms survive beyond four years and the characteristics of business owners cbo showed that about a third of closed businesses were successful at closure the cbo also made it possible to compare results of models of business survival and business success but because of non response bias logit models were used similar to previous studies firms having more resources that were larger with better financing and having employees were found to have better chances of survival factors that were characteristic of closure such as having no start up capital and having a relatively young owner were also common in businesses considered successful at closure hence few defining factors can be isolated leading to true failures the significant proportion of businesses that closed while successful calls into question the use of business closure as a meaningful measure of business outcome it appears that many owners may have executed a planned exit strategy closed a business without excess debt sold a viable business or retired from the work force it is also worth noting that such inborn factors as race and gender played negligible roles in determining survivability and success at closure

new firm survival new results using a hazard function a limitation of audretsch s 1991 study of new firm survival was the level of aggregation to industries this precluded linking establishment specific characteristics such as organizational structure and size to post entry performance the purpose of this paper is to relate the post entry performance of individual establishments not only to their technological and market structure environments but also to establishment specific characteristics we do this by estimating a hazard duration function for more than 12 000 individual establishments in u s manufacturing started in 1976 by tracking their subsequent performance over a ten year period we conclude that establishment specific characteristics which audretsch was not able to capture in his earlier study play an important role in shaping the exposure to risk confronting new establishments copyright 1995 by mit press

brown backstops versus the green paradox abstract anticipated climate policies are ineffective when fossil fuel owners respond by shifting supply intertemporally the green paradox this mechanism relies crucially on the exhaustibility of fossil fuels we analyze the effect of anticipated climate policies on emissions in a simple model with two fossil fuels one scarce and dirty e g oil the other abundant and dirtier e g coal we derive conditions for a green orthodox anticipated climate policies may reduce current emissions the model can also be used to analyze spatial carbon leakage calibrations suggest that intertemporal carbon leakage from 0 to 8 is a relatively minor concern

inverted u relationship between r d intensity and survival evidence on scale and complementarity effects in uk data existing evidence on the relationship between rd ii rd and iii creative destruction as proxied by median r d intensity in the industry and the premium on business lending have negative effects on firm survival other findings concerning age size productivity relative growth pavitt technology classes and the macroeconomic environment are in line with the existing literature the results are strongly or moderately robust to different samples stepwise estimations and controls for frailty and left truncation

why do most firms die young a model is developed to explain why most firms die in the first few years of trading a risk averse entrepreneur with initial capital endowment faces a brownian motion in net worth over time to balance return profits growth and risk variance of profits she adopts a portfolio strategy choosing market positioning to achieve an optimal combination of risk and return at each instant given her financial and human capital endowments and attitude towards risk failure occurs when the firm s value falls below the opportunity cost of staying in business the resulting distribution of failure is inverse gaussian implying for specific parameter values a positively skewed failure curve of the type observed in practice in addition the model presents a novel measure of management human capital mhc which implies that high mhc entrepreneurs will have higher absolute and marginal profits growth than low mhc entrepreneurs at given levels of risk

pre entrepreneurial income cash flow growth and survival of startup businesses model and tests on u k data a target income human capital model of startup survival and growth is derived and tested the objective of the entrepreneur is to produce an independent source of income for him herself to replace income from previous employment target income is a function of pre entrepreneurial income and human capital represented by age the model predicts that higher pre income entrepreneurs and more mature individuals will grow faster to achieve these targets and that growth is an ambiguous function of size it also predicts that these same individuals and businesses that start larger will be more likely to survive the key results of the empirical analysis are that a businesses run by proprietors with higher pre entrepreneurial incomes do indeed grow faster than other startups but have no greater survival prospects and b businesses run by mature proprietors possess greater longevity we conclude that business income targets in practice constitute a significant motivation for startup growth and that the human capital represented by age plays no additional role however proprietor age rather than pre income determines survival despite the fact that pre income and age are positively correlated both with each other and with growth

selection and firm survival evidence from the shipbuilding industry 1825 1914 several theories of firm performance can explain the well known observation that survival is positively related to age however a more mundane explanation selection bias driven by variations in firm quality may also underlie the phenomenon this paper employs a 90 year plant level panel data set on the u s iron and steel shipbuilding industry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to discriminate between the explanations the shipbuilding industry exhibits the usual joint dependence of survival on age and size but this dependence is eliminated after controlling for heterogeneity by using preentry experience as a proxy for firm quality the evidence points to a dominant role for selection bias in creating the age dependence of survival at the same time preentry experience is found to have a large and extremely persistent effect on survival and this finding is inconsistent with standard explanations for the role of preentry experience on firm performance

market selection along the firm life cycle this paper analyses market selection in french manufacturing goods markets over the last decade under the hypothesis that the competitive challenges which firms have to face may change along its life cycle we find that on average exiting firms display below average performance levels in terms of profitability and productivity moreover young firms are challenged not because of their relative efficiency they rapidly reveal themselves more efficient than old firms but in terms of industry concentration and turbulence this result reveals the presence of barriers to firm growth as an important driver of industry dynamics

a closer look at the effect of market growth on industries profits everybody talks about the relation of industries profit rates to their markets rates of growth but nobody does anything about it specifically researchers have confirmed the effect of the growth of nominal output on profits in many multivariate studies without specifying closely the hypothesis under test or the measure of demand growth appropriate to test it a profits growth relationship could stem from several mechanisms the lagged adaptation of capacity to unexpected changes in demand reactions of oligopolists to disturbances in their consensus etc these mechanisms how and where they work hold their own normative interest therefore knowing what behavior and what structure lying behind it accounts for the profits growth relationship should do more than improve the specifications of our studies of allocative efficiency it should also expand our knowledge of adaptive processes that are important and hard to observe directly in this paper we shall synthesize the available explanations of why changes in market demand should affect an industry s profits then present a statistical test of the relative significance of the competing explanations

the survival and growth of new establishments in sweden 1987 1995 the aim of the study is to examine the survival of new establishments and to identify factors affecting their survival probability and their employment growth this study uses a unique data set on all new establishments that were created in sweden 1987 and 1988 with the exception of the construction industry the results show among others that i new establishments face a high risk of closing down ii the probability of establishment survival increases with the age and size of the establishment iii variables that are assumed to measure access to resources being a part of a multi unit firm and being new due to merger or dispersal have a positive effect on survival iv the number of employees at the start up year has a negative effect on the employment growth and v demographic and educational factors are important in explaining survival and growth

the effects of government grants on plant survival a micro econometric analysis abstract in this paper we analyse the impact of government grant provision on plant survival to this end we utilise rich information derived from three data sources for the manufacturing sector in ireland where grant provision has been an important part of industrial policy our empirical analysis is based on estimating a hazard model of plant exit on a matched sample of plants in order to provide a valid counterfactual our results indicate that grants can in some cases provide an important impetus to plant survival

determinants of firm start up size an application of quantile regression for ireland in this paper we provide empirical evidence on the determinants of firm start up size using data for the manufacturing sector in ireland and compare our results with recent findings for portuguese manufacturing industries mata and machado 1996 to allow for firm heterogeneity between firm entrants we use quantile regression techniques for our empirical estimation we find that the determinants of start up size differ in their importance for small and large scale entrants in particular industry size and industry growth seem to affect large scale entrants only

determinants of firm start up size in the brazilian industry an empirical investigation the article investigates the determinants of newly created industrial establishments in brazil in 1997 taking as reference explanatory variables referring to market structure and industry dynamics stronger effects are detected for larger firms minimum efficient scale industry size industry growth and turbulence display the expected positive effects on firm size but the intensity of those are more pronounced for larger firms the suboptimal scale variable on the other hand exhibits a counterintuitive positive effect and perhaps other types of barriers to entry that are not related to scale aspects may be important in the brazilian case

return migration and the survival of entrepreneurial activities in egypt summary the literature shows that temporary international migrants have a high propensity to opt for an entrepreneurial activity upon return but the prospects of survival of these activities have not been explored we address this research question using longitudinal egyptian data we find that entrepreneurs migration experience significantly improves the chances of survival of their entrepreneurial activities adopting econometric techniques that control for return migrants nonrandom selection in unobservables we resort to a bivariate probit model and a two stage residual inclusion estimator using the rate of population growth and the real oil price as alternative instruments for migration

multinational companies technology spillovers and plant survival how does the presence of multinational companies affect plant survival in the host country we postulate that multinational companies can impact positively on plant survival through technology spillovers we examine the nature of the effect of multinationals using a cox proportional hazard model which we estimate using plant level data for irish manufacturing industries our results show that the presence of multinationals has a life enhancing effect only on indigenous plants in high tech industries suggesting the presence of technology spillovers in contrast multinationals compete with each other in low tech sectors in the host country

worker turnover industry localization and producer size abstract empirically large employers have been shown to devote greater resources to filling vacancies than small employers following this evidence this paper offers a theory of producer size based on labor market search whereby a key factor in the determination of a producer s total employment is the ease with which workers can be found to fill jobs that are periodically vacated since the geographic localization of industry has long been conjectured to facilitate the search process the model provides an explanation for the observed positive association between average producer size and the magnitude of an industry s presence within local labor markets

early employment expansion and long run survival examining employee turnover as a context factor abstract we investigate under which circumstances early employment growth translates into greater long run survival drawing on penrose s growth theory we suggest that the relationship between early employment growth and long run survival is conditional on employee turnover we argue that higher employee turnover reduces joint experience in the firm and disrupts the development and eventual exploitation of the firm s productive opportunity set thereby reducing long term utilization of early employment expansion these arguments suggest that the firm s ability to realize long term benefits of early employment growth is contingent upon low employee turnover following this initial expansion using the danish integrated database for labor market research we show that only when employee turnover is low will early employment growth lead to higher survival in the long run

price adjustment policies and firm size i introduction by the fall of 2009 several state departments of transportation in the united states adopted price adjustment policies to mitigate significant fluctuations in the cost of oil based inputs in government procurement price escalation in oil based materials such as asphalt binder or fuel was the main cause behind the trend firms increased bids to offset higher input prices adversely affecting procurement costs damnjanovic et al 2008 because inputs like asphalt experienced significant cost increases e g the price of alphalt increased by 31 in 2005 alone it is not surprising that contractors in general and small firms in particular struggled with construction budgets in response to the growing uncertainty many states introduced price adjustment policies for related inputs effectively dampening losses and profits at times of unanticipated cost fluctuations 1 while the latter part of last decade saw notable oil price price deviates beyond a certain range of the baseline index increases in the recent months firms enjoyed cost savings a percentage of which can be passed on to departments of transportation with the establishment of this policy going beyond industries directly impacted by uncertainty in oil prices the provisions investigated in this paper are common in defense contracting and were added to the health care law in what came to be known as risk corridors 2 as an example the department of defense has embedded such provisions in fixed price contracts with economic price adjustment fpepa these measures are designed to limit contractors exposure to economic uncertainty and market volatility prevalent in long term fixed price arrangements 3 in the same spirit the regional greenhouse gas initiative an emission permit trading program involving nine northeastern states in the united states held down price escalations by placing a price collar on allowances that limits variability we investigate the effect of the price adjustment policy on firm bidding behavior and competition intensity in road construction in oklahoma which can offer insights on the effectiveness of implementing such policies across industries we use data on public construction auctions to study the effect of this policy on firms of different sizes where size heterogeneity is a defining characteristic of the market cho 1986 the construction industry displays market concentration featuring a small number of strong contenders from the pool of over 150 participants in our sample the 11 firms that won most frequently were awarded over a quarter of auctioned projects and more than 38 of contracted value compared with the manufacturing sector surveyed in audretsch and mahmood 1995 a notably higher percentage of new construction companies end up failing many undersized and startup builders compete on the margin and have a low chance of making it to the list of long term players the literature has identified a strong correlation between firm size and financial solvency in association with firm survival and growth see brito and mello 1995 and hubbard 1998 in what follows we frame our empirical analysis with a theoretical model highlighting this connection as noted by gertler and gilchrist 1994 and martinelli 1997 there are asymmetric changes in firms borrowing costs when financial constraints are tightening in the face of uncertainty and they depend on the level of capital accumulation as a result high volatility in input prices is likely to reinforce the imbalance among competitors of different sizes 4 price adjustment policies help to level the playing field between small and large firms without invoking differential treatment toward a group finally there has been considerable interest in the literature in various policies that departments of transportation around the country use to help small businesses such as bid preference policies and setasides see for instance the work of denes 1997 marion 2009 krasnokutskaya and seim 2011 and athey coey and levin 2013

industrial dynamics and economic geography capasso m stam e and cefis e industrial dynamics and economic geography regional studies how do industries emerge and evolve over space in this special issue the fields of industrial dynamics and economic geography are brought together in order to achieve a richer and more fundamental understanding of the organization of industries over time and space than each of these fields could do separately firm heterogeneity at the micro level and industry composition of a region at the macro level provide important elements in the explanation of industry emergence and evolution over space history and space matter in the evolution of industries this special issue shows how and why