Immigrant entrepreneurs are critical to regional and national economies. Immigrants in the USA have higher self-employment rates than natives, and immigrants have made outsized contributions as founders of numerous highly successful firms. However, we document that immigrant self-employment...

In this paper, we examine the case of Vietnam as an example of this phenomenon. In Vietnam, the World Bank Indicators show a self-employment rate of 60% among men in 2008, whereas the United States rate is less than 15%. This wide gap between the two countries even greater than that between...

Using confidential and restricted-access microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau, we find that Asian-owned businesses are 16.9 percent less likely to close, 20.6 percent more likely to have profits of at least $10,000, and 27.2 percent more likely to hire employees than white-owned businesses in...