seminar for comments and criticism. The three anonymous referees and our editor, Simon Parker, gave us thorough and valuable comments, yet all remaining errors are our own. The authors' names are listed in alphabetical order for convenience. This was a fully collaborative effort.

Drawing on the institutional and regional entrepreneurship literature this study develops a conceptual framework to analyse the impact of higher education institutions on entrepreneurial dynamics across the cities of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during 1995-2008. Extending upon the multi-pillar institutional concept, we find that higher education institutions play a prominent role in fostering entrepreneurial dynamics in CIS cities through multiple channels including the human capital development; shaping a system of societal values which cultivate a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship; affecting perceptions of the knowledge and skills necessary to start up a business and succeed; and knowledge spillovers.

The authors investigate the determinants of start-up financing in fifty-four countries, using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys for the years 2001-6. They find that financial liberalization increases the total financial size of the individual start-up entrepreneurial project both via the increased use of external and of own funds. In addition, the volume of start-up finance responds positively to international capital inflows, as represented by loans from nonresident banks and remittances, and negatively to the volume of offshore deposits. The positive impact of remittances on total volume of start-up financing is via financing by the entrepreneur.