Too Cold to Venture There? January Temperature and Immigrant Self-Employment across the United States

File

21014.pdf (1.26 MB)

Date

2021-12-13

Authors

Lee, Jun Yeong
Winters, John

Publisher

Altmetrics

Authors

Winters, John

Person

Organizational Units

Economics

Organizational Unit

Department

Economics

Abstract

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 rates vary considerably across areas of the USA. Our main measure is the percentage of immigrant workers in an area who are self-employed; i.e., the self-employment rate for the foreign-born. Areas with colder winter temperatures have especially low self-employment rates among their immigrant populations compared to other areas of the USA. This relationship holds for numerous sub-samples of immigrants and is not driven by any particular group. The relationship persists after controlling for numerous individual and local area characteristics. Immigrant entrepreneurs appear to be especially forward-looking and responsive to warmer January temperature as a locational amenity. The results have important implications about the location choices of immigrant entrepreneurs.

Comments

JEL Classification: J61, L26, and R23. Length: 49 pages. Original Release Date: December 13, 2021.

Keywords

self-employment, entrepreneurship, immigrants, amenities, temperature

URI

https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/handle/20.500.12876/JwjboLXw

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