Immigrant entrepreneurs, diasporas, and exports

What is it about?

We investigate whether immigrant entrepreneurs located in a given administrative area (provinces in the Italian context) raise the exports of that region towards their origin countries.

Featured Image

Photo by Athanasios Papazacharias on Unsplash

Photo by Athanasios Papazacharias on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We do find that immigrant entrepreneurs have a pro-export effect. A positive effect of smaller magnitude is also found for immigrant workers. Moreover, immigrant entrepreneurs improve the general export performance of the province where they are located towards other destinations. Thus, we demonstrate that immigrant entrepreneurs and workers represent an important resource to improve a country's export competitiveness.