PurposeMotivated by a lack of evidence regarding the effect of migration on entrepreneurship in a highly informal country, such as Colombia, this paper has a twofold purpose. First, it explores how Venezuelan immigration affects entrepreneurial activity in Colombian regions. Second, it intends to shed light on this relationship, by distinguishing between formal and informal sectors.Design/methodology/approachWith a sample of 1,776,063 individuals, from the Labor Survey Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares (GEIH) from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE), the authors employ an instrumental variable approach to account for the selection of immigrants into locations with more or less desirable conditions.FindingsThe results suggest Venezuelan immigration positively influences self-employment and own-account workers, but negatively affects employers. However, once these immigrants proliferate in the informal sector, the effects increase.Originality/valueThis paper brings new insights into the intersection between immigration, unofficial economies, and entrepreneurship. First, while the prior literature focuses on migration from developing to developed countries, migratory flows between developing economies and its effects on local entrepreneurial activity remain unexplored. Second, although informality is mostly common in developing countries, little (albeit growing) evidence of its role in the relationship between migration and entrepreneurship research exists. Finally, the authors bring together these two phenomena to enhance our understanding of different types of entrepreneurial activities when immigration and informality take place. Policy implications are derived from these insights.

An effective digital strategy provides multifaceted benefits for firms of all sizes, including operational oversight, learning, and effective market interactions. Yet, despite the burgeoning evidence that digitalization provides essential resources for firms, disparate observations on the link between SME performance and digitalization across regions are noted in the literature. There remain concerns about whether SMEs enact effective digital strategies to reap the rewards, especially given that some SMEs have reported entirely forgoing digital activities due to resource constraints and exogenous forces in the market. In light of the varying global observations, it is crucial to understand how regional and multilayered institutional settings influence SMEs to adopt, implement, and utilise digital resources to form solid policies and appropriate facilitative mechanisms. Therefore, this 2 study compiled 11,485 observations of SME digital activities and performance from 88 distinctive institutional regions within Latin America and the Caribbean from 2006 to 2018. The study used data from the World Bank's Enterprise Survey (WBES) and World Development Indicators (WDI) to reveal various institutional factors influencing SMEs' adoption of technologies and subsequent performance via multilevel regressions. The findings suggest institutional barriers become insignificant when firms use digital technologies and suggest that it may insulate SMEs from exogenous shocks.

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