On Immigration and Native Entrepreneurship

David Jaeger, Harriet Orcutt Duleep and Peter McHenry

No 15920, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We present a novel theory that immigrants facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. Immigrants whose human capital is not immediately transferable to the host country face lower opportunity costs of investing in new skills or methods and will be more flexible in their human capital investments than observationally equivalent natives. Areas with large numbers of immigrants may therefore lead to more entrepreneurship and innovation, even among natives. We provide empirical evidence from the United States that is consistent with the theory’s predictions.

Keywords: Immigration; Innovation; entrepreneurship; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 J39 J61 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-int, nep-lab and nep-sbm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Working Paper: On Immigration and Native Entrepreneurship (2021)
Working Paper: On Immigration and Native Entrepreneurship (2021)
Working Paper: On Immigration and Native Entrepreneurship (2021)
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