Regional Entrepreneurial Heritage in a Socialist and a Postsocialist Economy

摘要

Regions have a distinct entrepreneurial heritage, understood as a historical tradition in entrepreneurial culture. The persistence of that heritage in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) is examined across severe ruptures in economic development. In this article, I argue that regional differences in private-sector activities under socialism-a system that was hostile toward entrepreneurs-reflect strong entrepreneurial orientations of local populations and regional cultures of entrepreneurship that were ' presocialist in origin. The empirical analysis suggests that an "entrepreneurial residual," left over from the socialist experiment, positively affected startup activity after the transformation of the GDR back to a market economy. The results show that an entrepreneurial culture is an important regional resource that endures.