Self-Employment and Migration
There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities so as to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed may in fact be more likely to migrate. We put together panel surveys from eight countries to descriptively examine the relationship between migration and self-employment, finding that the self-employed are indeed less likely to migrate than either wage workers or the unemployed. We then analyze seven randomized experiments that increased self-employment, and find their causal impacts on migration are negative on average, but often small in magnitude.
Year of publication: |
2019
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Authors: | Giambra, Samuele ; McKenzie, David |
Publisher: |
Bonn : Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) |
Subject: | internal migration | international migration | self-employment | migrant selection | randomized experiment |
Saved in:
freely available
Series: | IZA Discussion Papers ; 12624 |
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Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Type of publication (narrower categories): | Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Other identifiers: | 1681386321 [GVK] hdl:10419/207449 [Handle] RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12624 [RePEc] |
Classification: | F22 - International Migration ; J61 - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers ; O15 - Human Resources; Income Distribution; Migration |
Source: |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012141260