"The Social Capital of Regional Dynamics: A Policy Perspective"

This paper deals with social capital as an extra-market externality, and its role for innovations and growth. It analyses the changes of innovation activity over time, from early industrialism to the global knowledge economy, how the relations between the actors of today's innovation systems have developed and the role of social networks for innovations. The different kinds of networks built by the three constructers of social networks: the individual, the organizations and the (public and civic) society are discussed. The role of public policy in building social capital for innovations and growth is analyzed.

Swedish Universities in Transition: From “Mode 1†to what?

This paper aims at analyzing the obstacles to in-depth cooperation between Swedish universities and other parts of society. Social capital is used as a comprehensive concept for the norms, values and relations that exist in the university sector and between this sector and the surrounding society. A working hypothesis is that universities’ social capital is adapted by tradition to then Mode 1 production of knowledge, and that a transition to Mode 2 therefore requires a comprehensive change in the universities’ social capital. After an introduction, section 2 gives a background in its description of the development of the Swedish university policy, mainly from a national perspective. In section 3 an analysis is made of the reasons why Swedish universities still mainly are dominated by Mode 1 production of knowledge and in section 4, a number of areas that deserve further illumination are given prominence. In both these sections, norms, values and networks are central concepts in the analysis. Together these phenomena form the social capital of the universities and between the universities and other parts of society and the conclusion is that this constitutes an important obstacle to the development of a Mode 2 production of knowledge in Sweden.

DECOMPOSITION ANALYSIS OF POPULATION CHANGE AND ITS DETERMINANTS IN BEIJING-TIANJIN-HEBEI METROPOLITAN REGION

This paper provides two scenarios of population change and its spatial distribution at the county level in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region: three residential patterns and three population growth groups. The findings show that population change in this region mainly agglomerated to the urban districts and areas of fast population growth in the period of 1990-2000. Regression results also provide details on the contribution of a number of determinants to the population change in the divisions of each scenario. This research concludes by arguing the necessity of future population studies in terms of different regional or local conditions.Decomposition; Population change; Determinants; Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei

Economic Entrepreneurship, Startups and Their Effects on Local Development: The Case of Sweden

The current empirical entrepreneurship literature mainly shows a positive correlation between entrepreneurship (measured as the number of startups) and economic growth. However, the mechanisms by which entrepreneurship exerts its positive influence are not obvious. The net result of startups on employment or GDP can be negative, at least in the short run, since efficient, new companies may lead to closures of less efficient ones. Based on an assumption that economic entrepreneurship in the form of startups creates unobserved supply side effects on the firm level (Fritsch & Mueller 2004) and entrepreneurial social capital on community level (Westlund & Bolton 2003) this paper studies the connections between startups and local development at the municipal level in Sweden between 2000 and 2008. We use a unique database including not only total startups, but data on startups divided in six branches to study the impact of entrepreneurship on population and employment growth. Analyses are performed on all municipalities as well as by municipality type and by growth rate.

Measuring enterprises’ investments in social capital - a pilot study

Research on the impact of social capital on economic growth has mainly focused on civil society’s social capital. The social capital related to enterprises has received little attention. This paper aims at developing a method for measuring enterprises’ investments in social capital. We define enterprise-related social capital as social and economic networks in which enterprises intentionally and unintentionally invest and interact in. Certain components of these networks are open for ownership while others are not. Interaction in these networks generates network advantages and economic utility in individual firms as well as in the place/region in which they are located. Based on a division in internal and external social capital, we divide the latter in production-related, environment-related and market-related respectively. We differ between the networks’ links and the norms, values, etc that are distributed in the links by the nodes/enterprises. The study is delimited to measurement of the existence and structure of the links. The study shows that it is possible to measure enterprises’ investments (in money or time) in social capital. We also found some significant indications on connections between investments in social capital and the enterprises’ growth, however without being able to establish any casual relationship. Due to the limited number of participating enterprises these connections are merely indications.

Settlement Patterns on the Swedish Countryside in the Emerging Knowledge Society

As in other countries, urbanization and industrialization in Sweden was two sides of the same coin. To a large extent, the Swedish urbanization took place at a low level with the emergence of many small towns. The last decades, a redistribution of the urban population to bigger cities has happened. Simultaneously, the real countryside has increased its population around the big and mid-sized cities within commuting distance, but the countryside has also increased its share of the population in a majority of municipalities. Westlund (2002) found that the countryside’s population growth 1990-97 primarily could be explained by income and the size of the local labor market. In this paper, we examine the current trends of population development and extend the possible explanatory variables to among others, some variables measuring local social capital.

Social capital and local development in Swedish rural districts

This paper studies local social capital in two Swedish rural districts. It concentrates on the relations between local political/public bodies and local development groups. The political bodies have acted somewhat differently towards local development initiatives in the two districts. This has resulted in differences in the number of development groups and in the social capital of local culture, leisure and service environments. There are, however, few examples of social capital in these environments spreading to changes in production environments, in the form of e.g. attitudes to entrepreneurship, risktaking, etc. The study supports the view that private and public actors can change local social capital. Local organizations who act as intermediate nodes between the local groups and the political bodies seem to be of special importance. However, our results suggest that changing local social capital is a long-term mission that demands sustainable work.