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Business creation is an important measure of real economic activity as it shows the dynamics with which new firms are born, create jobs, move their capital, innovate and compete with old firms. In this sense, this paper aims to analyze the short-term impact of the lockdown policies implemented to stop the spread of the COVID-19 on the creation of new formal firms in Ecuador.

This paper uses a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design jointly with official administrative real-time data. This data is collected by the supervisory and regulatory institution of formal companies in Ecuador. The authors use real-time data from January 13, 2020, to May 15, 2020. This period allows to use the President’s order of effective lockdown on March 16, 2020, as the exogenous event. This gives 43 working days on each side of the cutoff date on the baseline model.

The authors find: an overall large drop in the creation of new formal firms (−73%) and a decrease in the total amount of initial capital coming from the new formal firms (−40%). Additionally, the results suggest that the negative impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the creation of new formal firms seems not to decrease in the short term. The main conclusion is that lockdown policies have a negative impact on firm creation, a result that is of high policy relevance and can be a tool to design business attraction policies.

The analysis is carried out in a short period because on May18, 2020, a new policy was applied in Ecuador that allowed firms to be created more quickly, with 1 USD of capital, and 1 shareholder, among other benefits, and this may affect the outcomes analyzed in this document, so extending the analysis of the impact of the lockdown to a longer period could result in biased results due to this policy. Additionally, studying daily sales would be of the utmost importance; however, these data are not found in the database of the supervising institution.

This study contributes to the empirical literature and the policy debate in various aspects. First, it is important to generate facilities for the creation of new formal firms, from the reduction of days it takes to create one (using technology as a support in this matter) to the decrease of the minimum capital to formalize a company. Second, improve the business conditions of the new formal firms that were born during the pandemic, but also that these conditions create stimulus for the creation of new companies. Third, the authors show that induced-lockdown policies have a negative impact on the creation of new formal firms and the total amount of initial capital from new formal firms; this effect could be a full-blown recession if governments do not apply mechanisms to revert this situation that could be a drag on the economy.

This paper opens the debate on the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on the creation of new formal firms; therefore, future research could study the impact in a broader time window to analyze medium and long-run effects, but also in different economic sectors and in the effects on firm bankruptcy, which added to an analysis of job loss, will show a total effect of damage in the economy.

The purpose of this paper is to combine studies that describe the spin-off creation process with studies that analyze spin-off determinants to understand the phenomenon of spin-off development.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to improve our understanding of academic spin-off development in southern Italy. Following a systematic combining approach, the framework is constructed by iteratively matching the concepts derived by the literature on spin-off processes and spin-off determinants with the empirical findings obtained through a case study of 19 spin-offs in southern Italy.

The combination of empirical results and literature analysis helps us to identify a general model for spin-off creation that could be particularly useful to explain the criticalities of their development.

This paper provides implications for policy-makers in southern Italy regarding factors for which intervention would support the creation of new spin-offs. This study also provides useful implications for policy-makers in other contexts, such as areas that may or may not be at a disadvantage.

The resulting framework represents an original contribution to the literature because it: links two aspects – the stages of spin-off creation and determinants of spin-off development – which are often considered separately in existing studies; explores factors that either impede or facilitate the different stages of spin-off development; provides a series of findings that can be successively tested in other studies; and sheds more light on the context of southern Italy, which has been investigated in only a limited number of previous studies.

This paper aims to verify the positive impact of legislative changes aimed at decontrolling the market on the entrepreneurial process of new companies’ creation. The entrepreneurial process has been analysed in the context of innovation, risk and market opportunities, which represent the three main approaches to entrepreneurship theories. The analysis is focussed on the social service sector in Finland.

The study is based on an ex post facto research design. The data are based on official statistics and the data bank of legislation. The case of Finland is used as an example for explaining the determinants of new company creation.

Legislative changes aimed at decontrolling the market seem to have a positive impact on the entrepreneurial process of new company creation. This influence is manifested in the form of market opportunities, risk bearing and the introduction of innovation. Of these three factors influencing the start-up process, the opportunities for market exploitation seem to have the greatest impact. In the Finnish social service sector, entrepreneurial opportunities are based on changes in the political structures that influence the market conditions. Entrepreneurs have also contributed to the opportunities by being active and innovative in filling any new gap in the market structures.

These results might be useful in the debate on policies supporting entrepreneurship. The example of the Finnish social service sector indicates that political changes in market regulations are a very effective method of supporting the process of entrepreneurship.

The paper is among the first to analyse both legislative changes and market changes affecting the entrepreneurial process, which indicates that the research is comprehensive. Second, legislative political actions to decontrol the market are a starting point in the discussion on the determinants of the entrepreneurial process. Third, the contribution of legislative changes in terms of market opportunities, innovation and risk bearing as avenues of influence on the entrepreneurial process is analysed.

This paper is an analysis of knowledge creation following implementation of the world's leading quality assurance standard, ISO 9000. We combine the perspectives of Nonaka on knowledge creation (Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995; and Krogh, Nonaka, & Nishiguchi, 2000) with those of authors who have dealt with the dynamics of rules and routines (March, Schulz, & Zhou, 2000; Nelson & Winter, 1982; Cohen & Bacdayan, 1994). On the basis of our analysis of ISO 9000 implementation we develop observations about rules and learning and about rule integration, absorption, and renewal. Our paper fits into the growing literature on the role of learning and knowledge transfer in quality improvement and the evolution of dynamic capabilities in the firm using routines and learning mechanisms such as knowledge codification.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the minimum conditions for the formation of an ecosystem that favours the emergence of spin-offs whose parent company is a family business.

Three family companies that have experienced processes supporting the creation of new companies led by family members were used for this exploration.

The findings show that it is possible to form an ecosystem with five basic components from which other factors of a different kind are derived, and that would favour the minimum conditions for new companies to emerge from the family business.

Spin-off companies have received valuable recognition in recent years. The vast majority of research on spin-offs considers those arising under the protection of a private innovation centre, a corporation, or university. This research gives more breadth to this coverage, by studying the emergence of spin-offs that rely on the family business as the parent company.

Esta investigación tiene el objetivo de identificar las condiciones mínimas para la conformación de un ecosistema que favorezca el surgimiento de empresas Spin-Off a partir de la empresa familiar como empresa madre.

Para esta exploración se tomaron tres empresas familiares que han experimentado procesos de apoyo a la creación de nuevas empresas lideradas por los miembros de la familia.

Los hallazgos muestran que es posible conformar un ecosistema con cinco componentes fundamentales a partir de los cuales se desprenden otros factores de diferente índole que propiciarían las condiciones mínimas para que emerjan nuevas empresas a partir de la empresa familiar.

Las empresas Spin-Off han tomado un valioso reconocimiento en los últimos años. La gran mayoría de investigaciones sobre empresas spin-off se ocupan de aquellas que surgen bajo el amparo de un centro de innovación privado, una corporación o una universidad. Esta investigación da más amplitud a esta cobertura, al estudiar el surgimiento de spin-off que se apoyan en la empresa familiar como empresa madre.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse if the divergences in the economic growth of the Spanish regions are a result of sectoral differences, company size or technological level of the new firms that emerge in the market.

For this purpose, a model is specified and estimated in which the total factor productivity of Spanish regions is explained by business dynamics, innovation, human capital and the level of entrepreneurship in each region.

The results obtained lead the authors to conclude that entrepreneurship understood as both the creation of new firms and entrepreneurial activity, have a positive effect on productive efficiency and can explain the differences in the economic growth of the regions. In addition, the stock of human capital and the promotion of innovation act as catalysts for the productive efficiency of the regions. However, the results show that it is not enough to generate new firms to boost economic growth; these businesses must also be oriented towards sectors that promote technological innovation and with the objective to reach an adequate size.

Empirical studies use either the creation of new firms or the index of entrepreneurial activity as alternative measures of entrepreneurship. In this research, however, both variables are considered together. Specifically, the creation of new companies is used as a measure of regional business dynamics, and the entrepreneurial activity index, provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, as a measure of regional entrepreneurship. The main novelty of this paper’s approach is that it considers different types of entrepreneurial capital in considering productive sector, size and technological level of the new companies.

This chapter is about an analysis and reflection on the actions, programs, and regulatory frameworks of the Mexican government for the promotion of entrepreneurial activity during the twentieth century. A documentary review is presented based mainly on the presidential reports available in the virtual legal library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Center for Documentation, Information, and Analysis of the Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados), and various publications of experts on economic history, considering the twentieth century: from the year 1900 with the end of the Porfiriato until the six-year term of Ernesto Zedillo that ended in 2000. The public policies of these 100 years were reviewed and based on this, was analyzed the importance assigned to the creation, development, and consolidation of companies and their importance in public policies. Special emphasis is given to instruments for the creation of new businesses or the development and strengthening of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

This chapter has aimed to indicate some new important emerging policy problems, which have characterised the Covid crisis in the European economy during 2020 and then the bounce-back in 2021. The chapter has illustrated an economic theoretical framework focussed on innovation and structural changes, according to a Schumpeterian and evolutionary or neo-institutional approach, which seems more appropriate than the traditional neoclassical and macroeconomic models, as the basis for a ‘new industrial strategy’ in the European Union. The mainstream economic models are static and point-like, as they do not consider the role of time and of space, such as the existence of asymmetric information and external economies and also the interdependence between the companies and the other ‘stakeholders’ in the process of economic development. On the contrary, the theoretical framework of this chapter considers the factors that act on the structural changes according to four different and interdependent dimensions: the final demand, the intermediate productions and also the supply of labour and the endowment of natural resources. Finally, some preliminary indications on the organisation of a new industrial strategy at the European scale are discussed, different from the focus on just the digital and green technologies, as indicated by the NGEU program by the European Commission.

This study aims to understand how entrepreneurship education and training programmes (EETPs) influence the development of entrepreneurial competencies and creation of business ventures.

The study included a questionnaire distributed to 103 EETP participants. The data were processed using SmartPLS software to construct a structural equation model.

The results show, first, that the respondents’ motivations have a positive impact on participation in entrepreneurship education programmes and company creation. Second, participation in these programmes positively influences individual entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial skills. The findings also include that the entrepreneurship education programme under study has strengthened its participants’ capacities and competencies, making these people more autonomous and facilitating their creation of new businesses.

This study sought to contribute to a fuller empirical understanding of how EETPs affect their participants’ individual entrepreneurship orientation and capacities (human resource development), thereby fostering company formation and regional development. Theoretical and practical implications are presented, with an emphasis on what needs to be done to improve EETPs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of six governance indicators on the rate of creation of new companies between countries that are members of the European Union (EU) and those that are not. H1 states that the various dimensions of governance help to explain the immediate creation of new businesses in European and non-European countries. H2 states that the various dimensions of governance help to explain the deferred creation of new businesses in European and non-European countries.

The paper uses two types of analyses: firstly, univariate analysis, which is a descriptive statistics of the dependent, independent and control variables, and the results of a t-test; and secondly, multivariate analysis, which estimates using the fixed-effects estimator under the specifications previously raised for the subsample of 28 EU countries and for the subsample of 103 non-EU countries during the period 2004-2014.

The results show that the variables of governance are not significantly higher in the EU, although the density of the enterprises is. Within the governance indicators, government effectiveness is significant in the EU. The results obtained for the EU confirmed H1and H2, with a significant positive effect of government effectiveness on entrepreneurship, while the other governance variables were not significant in the EU subsample. The results obtained for non-EU countries suggest no significant immediate effects (H1) and a slightly significant delayed effect of rule of law on the entrepreneurship (H2) concerned.

Future research in this area could consider introducing another regional division or other types of methodology as variables affect models.

Governance can be defined as the ability of a government and its public institutions to provide services and design, and implement rules, which is a factor that affects the creation of new companies. However, the effect of governance could differ depending on the country and its economic environment. This paper analyses the effect of six governance indicators on the rate of creation of new companies considering two different geographic regions as countries are presumably heterogeneous. Therefore, these results indicate that the effect of governance variables on entrepreneurship differs according to the region.

The effect of governance variables on entrepreneurship according to the region is also known.

This study applied panel data analysis to two samples of countries during the period 2004-2014, one formed by 28 countries of the EU and the other by 103 non-EU countries. No other paper considers this number of countries for this period. To assess the impact of governance on the creation of new companies, this paper considered the existence of immediate and deferred effects of governance on entrepreneurship.