Legalizing Entrepreneurship

Dany Bahar, Bo Cowgill and Jorge Guzman

No 30624, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use administrative data linked to the complete formal business registry to study a 2018 policy shift in Colombia that made nearly half a million Venezuelan undocumented migrants eligible for a resident visa. Immigrants who receive the visa increase their economic activity in the form of higher entrepreneurship by a factor as high as 12, bringing it to parity with native Colombians four years later. To establish causal estimates, we develop a novel extension of a regression discontinuity design. Our design uses variation in the running-variable (coming from rain) to instrument for migrants’ choices to apply for visas.

JEL-codes: J26 K37 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-int, nep-lma, nep-mig, nep-sbm and nep-ure
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