Regional economic performance and the differential prevalence of corporate and family business

Previous studies have largely examined interregional variations of SME rather than family firm concentrations. This paper addresses this gap through an analysis of firm type indicators across Europe from the Eurostat Data Base, using social, economic and demographic statistics at the NUTS 2 regional level to ascertain the nature, prevalence and regional contexts of family firm concentrations. Hierarchical clustering is performed to map the regional distribution of European family business. Results show that the co-existence of family SMEs with large firms is negatively related to regional economic performance, and this variation has implications for our understanding of the survival and strategic behaviour of family firms. The study promotes a new family business ‘in context’ than ‘by context’ point of view and paves the way for further empirical work with interregional family business data at various spatial levels.