ABSTRACT
There is a growing body of literature highlighting the positive contributions of migration and diasporas to economic growth, innovation and productivity. One of the channels facilitating these effects is entrepreneurship. This paper provides novel empirical evidence concerning the link between migration and firm entry across Italian regions during the period 2004–14, and it explores the role of ethnic concentration in this context. The results show that the stock of foreign population is positively correlated with firm entry. Furthermore, this relationship varies across business sectors and firms’ legal status, and it benefits from the existence of local networks within diaspora communities in the host region.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank the guest editors of this special issue as well as two anonymous referees for their insightful comments. They are also indebted to seminar participants at the Workshop of the Società Italiana di Economia e Politica Industriale (SIEPI), 10 February 2017, Palermo, Italy, for useful comments made on a previous version of this paper.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Giulia Bettin https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6711-0253
Patrizio Bianchi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4032-9014
Francesco Nicolli https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8109-5969
Laura Ramaciotti https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0512-6185
Ugo Rizzo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4409-9693