The Comparative Study On The Spatial Evolutionary Mechanisms Of Startup Firms At The Provincial Level In China

It is increasingly recognized by policymakers and the academic community that startup firms play an important role in enhancing national and regional economic competitiveness.Many ambitious initiatives have been launched and various measures have been taken to promote and develop new businesses.Existing studies on regional entrepreneurial activities,have focused largely on developed countries and the first-tier city-regions in developing countries with innovation resources and well-established supporting environments,however,we have little knowledge about the underdeveloped and frontier regions,not to mention comparative research on interregional differences in spatial evolutionary mechanisms of new business.Based on the analytical framework of “national-regional-local” multi-scale interaction,the study focuses on the political,economic,and institutional environment of entrepreneurial activities at various geographical scales,as well as regional development differences.Using the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods,this study examines the spatio-temporal evolution of startup firms’ agglomerations in two different types of regions,Tianjin and Tibet.Then,it is the comparative analysis of these two cases that reveals the generality and particularity of their evolutionary dynamics.Tianjin is the developed municipality along the Bohai Sea region in North China,but it is also the epitome of an old industrial city in China undergoing industrial transformation;Tibet is the underdeveloped region on the southwestern frontier,the autonomous region that has long gained political and economic assistance in the context of the state-sponsored system with Chinese characteristics.The findings include:(a)Whether in developed or underdeveloped areas,traditional regional economic centers and their surrounding cities/towns are often the preferred locations for entrepreneurs,with strong persistence in entrepreneurial activities;(b)The creation and expansion of special economic spaces has the agglomeration effect on new firms,especially in developed regions;(c)Infrastructure connectivity facilitates the spatial clustering of startup firms,but underdeveloped regions struggle to finance large infrastructure developments,political and economic assistance from outside the region critically important for their entrepreneurial activities.The main contributions of this study are: firstly,it highlights the analytical paradigm of the evolution on entrepreneurial activities’ agglomeration by the external environment and endogenous forces;secondly,it provides the relatively complete quantitative analysis and qualitative explanation about spatial-temporal distribution of entrepreneurial activities in China,Tianjin and Tibet respectively;thirdly,it reveals the dynamic differences in the agglomeration of entrepreneurial activities in Tianjin and Tibet through the perspective of comparative analysis.The study finally points out that there is the inevitably diversity in the spatial distribution of startup firms and their motivations in different types of regions,and that the validity of the above findings to other regions in China still requires more sample testing.This study has the practical implications that directly serve regional economic development strategies,and the theoretical significance that enrich the geography of entrepreneurship in the specific national/regional/local context.