ABSTRACT
Lois Labrianidis Introduction The main objective of this chapter is to enhance our understanding of the underdevelopment of European rural peripheral areas and to show that this could be partly attributed to the existence of limited entrepreneurship in these areas. This limited entrepreneurship might be explained by a plethora of reasons, such as the small size of local markets and the difficulties of accessing wider markets, or by the lack of finance. The most important reason, however, appears to derive from the characteristics of the human capital in these rural areas (such as the older age structure, conservatism, and lack of education) with the most dynamic elements of rural societies usually being the most likely to migrate to an urban area.
