Entrepreneurial Competition and Industrial Location: Investigating the Structural Patterns and Intangible Sources of Competitive Performance

"Entrepreneurial Competition and Industrial Location" combines theoretical rigour and innovative empirical methods to assess the distinct role of intangible investments and their impact on competitive performance. Michael Peneder uses a structuralist approach which demonstrates that there is a strong and systematic relationship between intangibles and competitive advantage. The book explores the notion of entrepreneurial competition from its theoretical foundations in early Austrian and contemporary evolutionary economics and also argues for an extension towards a system based theory of the firm. Focusing on the structural development of the intangible factors of production such as labour skills, advertising and research and development, the book's empirical implications are tested in a comparative study of competitive performance in the EU, Japan and the USA. Typical mechanisms of external spillovers, shaping industrial location by means of Marshallian cluster formation, are also investigated. Peneder finally employs the three evolutionary principles of variation, cumulation and selection to establish entrepreneurship, learning and fair markets as the main pillars of modern competitiveness policy. This volume paves the way for a better understanding of the market process, demonstrating the importance of intangible factors as sources of competitive advantage both by conclusive theoretical argument and careful empirical investigation.