Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Migration, Entrepreneurship and Social Capital

Yves Zenou and Jackline Wahba

No 7552, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate whether return migrants are more likely to become entrepreneurs than non-migrants. We develop a theoretical search model that puts forward the trade off faced by returnees since overseas migration provides an opportunity for human and physical capital accumulation but, at the same time, may lead to a loss of social capital back home. We test the predictions of the model using data from Egypt. We find that, even after controlling for the endogeneity of the temporary migration decision, an overseas returnee is more likely to become an entrepreneur than a non-migrant. Although migrants lose their original social networks whilst overseas, savings and human capital accumulation acquired abroad over-compensate for this loss. Our results also suggest that social networks have no significant impact on becoming entrepreneurs for returnees but matter for non-migrants.

Keywords: entrepreneurship; Savings; Selection; Social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-ent, nep-mig, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7552 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Out of sight, out of mind: Migration, entrepreneurship and social capital (2012)
Working Paper: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Migration, Entrepreneurship and Social Capital (2009)
Working Paper: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Migration, Entrepreneurship and Social Capital (2009)
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:cpr:ceprdp:7552

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7552

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().