Migration, ethnic concentration and firm entry: evidence from Italian regions

Abstract

There is a growing body of literature highlighting the positive contributions of migration and diasporas to economic growth, innovation and productivity. One of the channels facilitating these effects is entrepreneurship. This paper provides novel empirical evidence concerning the link between migration and firm entry across Italian regions during 2004-2014, and the study explores the role of ethnic concentration in this context. The results show that the stock of foreign population is positively correlated with firm entry. Furthermore, this relationship varies across business sectors and firms' legal status, and it benefits from the existence of local networks within diaspora communities in the host region.

Does low-skilled immigration increase profits? Evidence from Italian local labour markets

“…By assigning firms to the local labor market where they have their legal residence, we disregard that medium and large firms may have more than one plant located in different local labor market. To attenuate this concern, we 19 These findings are only apparently in contrast with those by Bettin et al, 2019, who find that immigration increases firm entry. Were we to estimate the relationship between immigration and firm entry using OLS, as they do, we would also find a small positive effect, which could be driven, however, by the endogeneity of immigration.…”

Immigrant-native gap in risk and time preferences in Germany: Levels, socio-economic determinants, and recent changes

“…Researchers find a positive association between migration and new firm formation (Bettin et al, 2019;Jahn & Steinhardt, 2018;Olney, 2013). Others highlight that immigrants are, on average, younger and healthier than comparable native-born (Cunningham et al, 2008;Goldman et al, 2014), and studies are devoted to investigating the healthy immigrant effect (Constant et al, 2018;Kennedy et al, 2015;Maskileyson et al, 2019).…”

Do Firms Follow Immigrants? Empirical Evidence From Italy

“…They conclude that this is the consequence of the specific immigration pattern of Italy, which is characterised by a large majority of low-skilled immigrants and where the immigrants' human capital is underutilised. Finally, Bettin et al (2019) examine the relationship between migration and firm entry rates across Italian regions in low and medium-tech industrial context mostly characterised by low-skilled migration inflows. They analyse data from 2002 to 2015 and find an overall positive relationship between migration and entrepreneurship, which, however, does not appear to be homogeneous when the legal status of firms and the © 2020 Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG sector of activity are considered.…”