Regional economic performance and the differential prevalence of corporate and family business Zografia Bika Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and Peter Rosa Business School, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Abstract Purpose – Previous studies have largely examined interregional variations of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) rather than family firm concentrations. This paper aims to address this gap through an analysis of firm type indicators across Europe from the Eurostat database, using social, economic and demographic statistics at the NUTS 2 regional level to ascertain the nature, prevalence and regional contexts of family firm concentrations. Design/methodology/approach – Hierarchical clustering is performed to map the regional distribution of the European family business. Findings – 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 the understanding of the survival and strategic behaviour of family firms. Originality/value – 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. Keywords Family firms, Self-employment, Context, Regional development, Europe Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Although the importance of family businesses to national economies has been recognised for some time, their regional distribution is uneven and “little is known about where family firms tend to appear” (Chang et al., 2008, p. 559). Using US state-level data, they illustrated how in less prosperous regions, family firms may play a “role of disproportionate importance in economic development” (Chang et al., 2008, p. 569). How external environmental conditions affect the regional distribution of family firms, these authors argue, is thus, an important, but overlooked field of study amongst family business researchers. They suggested further research in other regional study contexts, not only different countries but also differences between less aggregated regions. They also highlighted an important problem of causality, whether economic development caused by external factors in less developed regions allows more family firms to develop (because large non-family firms do not tend to locate in poor This paper forms part of a special section “Family Entrepreneurship in Communities: Social Context and the Creation of Social Value”, guest edited by James Cunningham and Claire Seaman. The authors acknowledge support from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/ S004656/1) and the ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network) 2006 Programme (Project 2.1.3). JEC 16,2 238 Received 14 November 2019 Revised 26 April 2020 18 July 2020 Accepted 8 September 2020 Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy Vol. 16 No. 2, 2022 pp. 238-259 © Emerald Publishing Limited 1750-6204 DOI 10.1108/JEC-11-2019-0116 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1750-6204.htm