Self-Employment and Migration

Samuele Giambra and David McKenzie

No 9007, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed may be more likely to migrate. This paper puts together panel surveys from eight countries to descriptively examine the relationship between migration and self-employment, finding that the self-employed are indeed less likely to migrate than wage workers or the unemployed. The paper then analyzes seven randomized experiments that increased self-employment, and finds that their causal impacts on migration are negative on average, but often small in magnitude.

Keywords: Employment and Unemployment; Educational Sciences; Private Sector Economics; Private Sector Development Law; Marketing; Labor Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Self-employment and migration (2021)
Working Paper: Self-employment and Migration (2019)
Working Paper: Self-Employment and Migration (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9007

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