Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/149418 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Citation: 
[Journal:] IZA Journal of Migration [ISSN:] 2193-9039 [Volume:] 3 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2014 [Pages:] 1-24
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Immigrants experience substantial disadvantages in employment in the host country. "Ethnic capital" (e.g. the ethnic network) is argued to provide a niche for immigrants. Previous international studies adopt either ethnic concentration or language as proxy for immigrants' network in host country. In this paper we introduce a new "spatial autoregressive network approach" to construct a dynamic network variable from micro-data to capture the effects of social and resource networks for immigrants. This approach allows each individual's self-employment decision to be geographically and ethnically correlated with that of other individuals. We further show that there are three advantages of this approach: it captures a more accurate effect of networks; it provides a better estimation of the impact of other socio-economic variables on self-employment; and it provides a better data fit. The empirical findings of this study strongly suggest that ethnic capital plays a vital role in relation to immigrants' self-employment decisions.
Subjects: 
Ethnic capital
Ethnic network
Ethnic concentration
Spatial approach
Immigrant
Self-employment
JEL: 
J23
J61
Z13
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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