The Effect of (Mostly Unskilled) Immigration on the Innovation of Italian Regions

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

“…In terms of sectors, they mainly contribute to the creation of low-tech firm types that often require only a small investment to start and consequently imply lower risks. This somewhat mirrors the evidence reported by Bratti and Conti (2014), who observed that migration had no significant effect on innovation activities across Italian regions. Italy has a far lower share of skilled migrants compared to northern European and Anglo-Saxon countries that have implemented specific programmes designed to attract migrant entrepreneurs (Antecol and Schuetze, 2007).…”

“…The overall positive relationship between migration and firm entry rate does not allow us to reject hypothesis 1. These results are in line with existing evidence on migrant workers in Italy in which migrants are predominantly low-skilled and tend to take manual-intensive and routine-type occupations in the domestic, elderly-care, construction and manufacturing sectors (Bettin et al, 2014;Bratti and Conti, 2014). In terms of legal status, the vast majority of migrants' enterprises in Italy consist of single-partner companies whose set up does not involve excessive bureaucratic procedures and which lend themselves to reduced or sometimes discontinuous initial investments and related risks (IDOS, 2016).…”

“…Unlike the Anglo-Saxon and northern European countries that are able to attract high-skilled migration, migrant flows to Italy are largely composed of low-skilled individuals. In 2001, Italy's percentage of tertiary-educated migrants was 15.4%, which was significantly lower than those of Canada (59%), the US (43%), the UK (35%) and Germany (22%) (Bratti and Conti, 2014).…”

Migration of skilled workers and innovation: A European Perspective

“…Since the instrument captures the part of migration flows that follows ethnic networks, it may very well be that these immigrants are more productive as the network may have facilitated and optimized their entry into the labor market. Indeed, many other papers that use the ethnic enclave instruments in different settings find a similar result (among others, Card and DiNardo, 2000;Hunt et al, 2010;D'Amuri and Peri (2014); Bratti and Conti, 2014).…”

Regional economic development: The role of migration

“…force in region r at time t. Also used in Bratsberg and Raaum (2012 [70]) or Borjas and Edo (2021[71]), this algebraic definition is derived from simple labour demand theory (Borjas, 2003[52]), facilitates the interpretation of the estimates and avoids any undefined observations due to zeros in the data. The conclusions of this analysis are robust to using (M rt / N rt ) as an alternative measure of sudden regional supply changes or the use of total population in the denominator (M rt / M rt + N rt ).…”