The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States

Randall Akee, David Jaeger and Konstantinos Tatsiramos

No 3250, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using recently-available data from the New Immigrant Survey, we find that previous self-employment experience in an immigrant’s country of origin is an important determinant of their self-employment status in the U.S., increasing the probability of being self-employed by about 7 percent. Our results improve on the previous literature by measuring home-country self-employment directly rather than relying on proxy measures. We find little evidence to suggest that home-country self-employment has a significant effect on U.S. wages in either paid employment or self employment.

Keywords: New Immigrant Survey; entrepreneurship; self-employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2007-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: Economics Bulletin, 2013, 33(1), 126-137

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States (2013)
Working Paper: The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States (2007)
Working Paper: The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States (2007)
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