Nuevas empresas e instituciones de apoyo: el caso de la promocion empresarial en los ambitos rurales y urbanos de Cataluna

Las intervenciones publicas realizadas con la finalidad de fomentar el desarrollo de las zonas rurales pueden justificarse por la necesidad de corregir los desequilibrios regionales y asegurar unas condiciones de vida similares a las de los ambitos urbanos. Entre las medidas aplicadas, recientemente destacan aquellas dirigidas al fomento de iniciativas empresariales. En esta investigacion se analizan las medidas de apoyo a la creacion de empresas en el ambito rural de Cataluna en comparacion con las aplicadas en los territorios urbanos, tomando la teoria institucional como marco teorico. Para ello se realizaron entrevistas a los responsables de los organismos de apoyo y encuestas a los empresarios de ambas zonas. Los principales resultados revelan, por un lado, el claro predominio de los apoyos economicos y, por otro, una complejidad inherente a los propios programas que, especialmente en el ambito rural, llegan a desincentivar en ocasiones a los nuevos empresarios...Public interventions driving rural development are often justified by the need to correct market failures and regional disparities. Recently, the promotion of endogenous business creation has become amongst the most popular measures used by public administrations to achieve these objectives. This study uses the institutional theory to analyse the entrepreneurship support measures in rural Catalonia as compared to those of urban areas. More specifically the study analyses the supply and demand for entrepreneurship support programmes and measures in the Garrotxa, a rural country, and the Valles Occidental, an urban county of Catalonia. The research objectives that the study is meant to achieve are as follows: 1. To identify and describe the most relevant institutions and support programmes available to new firms in the rural county of Garrotxa and in the Urban county of Valles Occidental (supply analysis). 2. To compare the levels of awareness and utilization of the support programmes by rural and urbran entrepreneurs from the analyzed counties and their evaluation of these programmes (demand analysis). 3.To analyse the possible gap between the supply and demand of support measures in order to determine how support for new firms can, and should, be improved in both Garrotxa and the Valles Occidental. To achieve the objectives related to the study of the supply of business creation assistance, personal interviews were realised with the individuals responsible for business creation support and assistance within the main institutions of the Catalan counties of the Garrotxa and the Valles Occidental. This information was complemented by different sources of secondary data, such as information pamphlets, the institutions' internal statistics and documents, web-sites, press news as well as specialized journal articles. On the other hand, the objectives related to the analysis of the demand for business creation assistance were reached by conducting 92 and 58 interviews with new entrepreneurs of the Garrotxa and the Valles Occidental counties, respectively. On the supply side, the study identifies and maps out the most relevant institutions and support programmes available to new firms in the Catalan counties of Valles Occidental and Garrotxa. On the demand side, the awareness and utilisation of the programmes by the entrepreneurs of the two counties under study are given and compared to the results obtained from a reference sample of entrepreneurs from across Catalonia. A gap is identified between the supply and demand of support measures to business creation.