This paper contributes to the literatures on entrepreneurship and economic geography by investigating the effects of clusters
on the survival and performance of new entrepreneurial firms where clusters are defined as regional agglomerations of related
industries. We analyze firm-level data for all 4,397 Swedish firms started in the telecom and consumer electronics, financial
services, information technology, medical equipment, and pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical sectors from 1993 to 2002. We
find that that firms located in strong clusters create more jobs, higher tax payments, and higher wages to employees. These
effects are consistent for absolute agglomeration measures (firm or employee counts), but weaker for relative agglomeration
measures (location quotients). The strengths of the effects are found to vary depending on which geographical aggregation
level is chosen for the agglomeration measure.
Keywords Clusters - Agglomeration - Entrepreneurship - Survival - Job creation
JEL Classifications R12 - L26 - O12