NILS Working paper no 179. Immigration policy and entrepreneurship

This paper analyses the impact of a change in Australias immigration policy, introduced in the mid-1990s, on migrants probability of becoming entrepreneurs. The policy change consists of stricter entry requirements and restrictions to welfare entitlements. The results indicate that those who entered under more stringent conditions, the second cohort, have a higher probability to become self-employed, than those in the first cohort. We also find significant time and region effects. Contrary to some existing evidence, time spent in Australia positively affects the probability to become self-employed. We discuss intuitions for the results in the paper.