Imputing Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the 2002 SBO: Methods and Results

Parag Mahajan

CES Technical Notes Series from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

Abstract: This memo documents efforts to understand and improve the quality of data produced through Census Bureau business surveys by developing an imputation model for foreign-born ownership of businesses that can extend backward in time, to the 2002 Survey of Business Owners. It uses a model selection procedure that ultimately selects a random forest model with good out-of-sample prediction capability (AUC = 0.86). It then estimates that foreign-born individuals founded 16% of new employer businesses that started between 1998 and 2002. This estimate extends the longest known U.S. time series on immigrant entrepreneurship that does not rely on self-employment as a proxy for entrepreneurship.

Keywords: SBO; ABS; LBD; Decennial; ACS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
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https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/ced/apply-for-access.html?CES-TN-2026-03 First version, 2026 (application/pdf)
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