The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States

25 Pages Posted: 23 May 2008

See all articles by Randall Akee

Randall Akee

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

David A. Jaeger

University of St. Andrews - School of Economics and Finance; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IZA Institute of Labor Economics; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); University College London - CReAM - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration

Konstantinos Tatsiramos

University of Luxembourg; Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

Abstract

Using recently-available data from the New Immigrant Survey, we find that previous self-employment experience in an immigrant's country of origin is an important determinant of their self-employment status in the U.S., increasing the probability of being self-employed by about 7 percent. Our results improve on the previous literature by measuring home-country self-employment directly rather than relying on proxy measures. We find little evidence to suggest that home-country self-employment has a significant effect on U.S. wages in either paid employment or self employment.

Keywords: self-employment, entrepreneurship, New Immigrant Survey

JEL Classification: J61, J21

Suggested Citation

Akee, Randall and Jaeger, David A. and Tatsiramos, Konstantinos, The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States. IZA Working Paper No. 3250, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1136412 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1136412

Randall Akee (Contact Author)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

David A. Jaeger

University of St. Andrews - School of Economics and Finance ( email )

The Scores, Castlecliff
St. Andrews, Fife KY16 8RD
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.djaeger.org

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Schaumburg-Lippe 5/9
Bonn, 53113
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.iza.org

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

University College London - CReAM - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration ( email )

Drayton House
30 Gordon Street
London, WC1H 0AX
United Kingdom

Konstantinos Tatsiramos

University of Luxembourg ( email )

L-1511 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) ( email )

11, Porte des Sciences
Campus Belval – Maison des Sciences Humaines
Esch-sur-Alzette, L-4366
Luxembourg

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
106
Abstract Views
1,190
Rank
459,927
PlumX Metrics