How Immigration May Affect U.S. Native Entrepreneurship: Theoretical Building Blocks and Preliminary Results
This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings and provides empirical evidence for a model that predicts a positive impact of immigration on entrepreneurial activity. Immigrants, we hypothesize, facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. At the heart of this theoretical prediction is the observation that human capital not immediately valued in the U.S. labor market is useful for learning new skills. Because immigrants face a lower opportunity cost of investing in new skills or methods, this "transfer" of source-specific skills to the U.S. may lead immigrants to be more flexible in their human capital investments than observationally equivalent natives. Areas with large numbers of immigrants (even if they are not self-employed) may prove to be areas in which entrepreneurship and innovation are easier to accomplish. Our theory offers a unique perspective on the contributions of immigrants to economic development beyond traditional perspectives that focus on low-cost immigrant labor or immigrant entrepreneurship.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
| Length: | 32 pages |
| Date of creation: | Jun 2012 |
| Handle: | RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6677 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany Phone: +49 228 3894 223 Fax: +49 228 3894 180 Web page: http://www.iza.org
|
| Order Information: | Postal: IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany Email: |
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Timothy Bates, 1993. "Determinants Of Survival And Profiability Among Asian Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses," Working Papers 93-11, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
- Green, David A, 1999. "Immigrant Occupational Attainment: Assimilation and Mobility over Time," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(1), pages 49-79, January.
- Harriet Duleep & Mark Regets, 1997. "Measuring immigrant wage growth using matched CPS files," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 34(2), pages 239-249, May.