TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Duleep, Harriet
AU  - Jaeger, David A.
AU  - Regets, Mark
        TI  - How Immigration May Affect U.S. Native Entrepreneurship: Theoretical Building Blocks and Preliminary Results
        PY  - 2012/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 6677
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp6677
        AB  - This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings and provides empirical evidence for a model that predicts a positive impact of immigration on entrepreneurial activity. Immigrants, we hypothesize, facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship by being willing and able to invest in new skills. At the heart of this theoretical prediction is the observation that human capital not immediately valued in the U.S. labor market is useful for learning new skills. Because immigrants face a lower opportunity cost of investing in new skills or methods, this "transfer" of source-specific skills to the U.S. may lead immigrants to be more flexible in their human capital investments than observationally equivalent natives. Areas with large numbers of immigrants (even if they are not self-employed) may prove to be areas in which entrepreneurship and innovation are easier to accomplish. Our theory offers a unique perspective on the contributions of immigrants to economic development beyond traditional perspectives that focus on low-cost immigrant labor or immigrant entrepreneurship.
        KW  - immigration
KW  - innovation
KW  - entrepreneurship
KW  - human capital investment
KW  - skill transferability
KW  - opportunity cost
KW  - learning transferability
        ER  -