Is Self-Employment for Migrants? Evidence from Italy
Marianna Brunetti and
Anzelika Zaiceva
No 563, CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS
Abstract:
Using a unique Italian dataset covering the period 2004-2020, we assess the immigrant-native gap in entrepreneurship and investigate channels behind it. The data allows us to account for many observable characteristics as well as for risk aversion, which is usually not observed, yet crucial for the self-employment decision. Unlike most of the existing empirical literature, we find that immigrants in Italy are less likely to be self-employed. The negative gap is confirmed when propensity score matching methodology is used. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the negative gap is larger for men, for economic migrants and those coming from Sub-Saharan Africa, while it is not significant for mixed immigrant-native couples, for highly skilled, and for migrants from Asia and Oceania. The largest gap is found for those working in the agricultural sector. Regarding additional channels, we explore the role of access to credit, including the informal one, and whether migrants are credit constrained, as well as the importance of migrant networks, easiness of doing business, and expenditures on services for migrants. Despite finding significant correlations between self-employment and some of these factors, none of them seem to decrease the magnitude of the negative gap.
Keywords: Immigrants; self-employment; gender; intermarriage; propensity score matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J21 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2023-07-31, Revised 2023-07-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-sbm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://ceistorvergata.it/RePEc/rpaper/RP563.pdf Main text (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Is Self-Employment for Migrants? Evidence from Italy (2023)
Working Paper: Is Self-Employment for Migrants? Evidence from Italy (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:563
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma
https://ceistorvergata.it
segr.ceis@economia.uniroma2.it
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS CEIS - Centre for Economic and International Studies - Faculty of Economics - University of Rome "Tor Vergata" - Via Columbia, 2 00133 Roma. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Barbara Piazzi (piazzi@ceis.uniroma2.it).