Rule of law and regulatory quality as drivers of entrepreneurship

This paper investigates empirically the effects of institutions on new business formation in the Italian provinces over the period 2004–12. According to the results, local institutional quality positively affects entry rates, and its impact is stronger in high-tech industries. Among different institutional dimensions, rule of law turns out to be more important in southern lagging regions, while regulatory quality seems more relevant in the developed centre–north. In times of crisis, institutional quality loses importance in determining entries, which become more sensitive to the propensity to innovate and to human capital and infrastructural endowments.