In 2020, the Covid 19-pandemic and the anti-pandemic measures – in addition to the amendment of the Handicrafts Regulation – had a negative impact on start-up activity in the majority of districts. The extent to which start-up activity in a region declined or occasionally increased varies considerably. Regional factors that would have strengthened or weakened start-up activity in the pandemic year 2020 cannot be readily identified.
Based on the business registration statistics and information on the economic framework conditions in the districts, Dr Rosemarie Kay, Peter Kranzusch and Dr Sebastian Nielen investigated the influence of key factors of the regional start-up ecosystem on regional start-up intensity in the pandemic year and the two previous years. This also showed that in the regions that already had a high start-up intensity in 2019, it remained comparatively high in 2020. Business start-up intensity is the number of start-ups per 10,000 persons of working age.
