This paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurial spirit on immigrant entrepreneurship in the United States. Entrepreneurial spirit refers to attitudes and perceptions towards entrepreneurship, or general self-employment. I address the home country self-employment hypothesis and examine the effect of home country self-employment rates on immigrant self-employment outcomes. I find a negative effect of home country self-employment rates on immigrant self-employment rates and thus, reject the home country self-employment hypothesis. I argue that home country self-employment rates over-estimate entrepreneurial spirit because they are largely driven by the world’s poorest people who are less likely emigrate to the U.S. I address this issue by using immigrants’ home country’s Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) as a measure of immigrant entrepreneurial spirit. I find that the GEI has a positive effect on immigrant self-employment rates, and provide evidence that entrepreneurial spirit has a positive effect on immigrant entrepreneurship in the U.S.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cmc_theses-3101 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| Creators | Sandell-Gandara, Alejandro |
| Publisher | Scholarship @ Claremont |
| Source Sets | Claremont Colleges |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | CMC Senior Theses |
| Rights | © 2018 Alejandro Sandell-Gandara, default |
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