Abstract:

The role of the local entrepreneur in the development of rural industrialization is often overlooked. Based on an empirical survey of entrepreneurs in both urban and rural areas in Israel, this paper shows that the rural setting scores less favorably than the urban for nearly all those locational attributes that would attract industrial development. Consequently, the chances of attracting external initiatives to rural areas would seem slim. Instead, it is argued that a strategy for rural industrial development needs to be based on the mobilization of indigenous entrepreneurial potential for which the rural setting provides a subjective relative advantage.

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