IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/easeco/v46y2020i1d10.1057_s41302-019-00142-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

September 11 and the Rise of Necessity Self-Employment Among Mexican Immigrants

Author

Listed:
  • Chunbei Wang

    (The University of Oklahoma)

  • Magnus Lofstrom

    (Public Policy Institute of California)

Abstract

Since the September 11 attacks (9/11), the USA has seen a tightening of immigration policies. Previous studies find that stricter immigration enforcement has the unintended effect of pushing undocumented immigrants into self-employment. This paper builds on the literature to better understand the changes in the types of self-employment among Mexican immigrants triggered by the tightened immigration enforcement after 9/11. Using a difference-in-differences approach, and the recently developed measures by Fairlie and Fossen (Opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurship: two components of business creation, 2018) to distinguish between necessity and opportunity self-employment, we find that both necessity and opportunity self-employment increased among Mexican immigrants after 9/11. However, the effect is most prominent on necessity self-employment, consistent with the hypothesis that they are pushed into self-employment as a survival alternative.

Suggested Citation

  • Chunbei Wang & Magnus Lofstrom, 2020. "September 11 and the Rise of Necessity Self-Employment Among Mexican Immigrants," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 5-33, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:46:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41302-019-00142-7
    DOI: 10.1057/s41302-019-00142-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41302-019-00142-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41302-019-00142-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Cynthia Bansak, 2014. "Employment Verification Mandates And The Labor Market Outcomes Of Likely Unauthorized And Native Workers," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 32(3), pages 671-680, July.
    2. Borjas, George J., 2017. "The labor supply of undocumented immigrants," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-13.
    3. Magnus Lofstrom, 2002. "Labor market assimilation and the self-employment decision of immigrant entrepreneurs," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(1), pages 83-114.
    4. Neeraj Kaushal & Robert Kaestner & Cordelia Reimers, 2007. "Labor Market Effects of September 11th on Arab and Muslim Residents of the United States," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 42(2).
    5. Robert W. Fairlie & Frank M. Fossen, 2018. "Opportunity versus Necessity Entrepreneurship: Two Components of Business Creation," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 959, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    6. Kenneth Couch & Robert Fairlie, 2010. "Last hired, first fired? black-white unemployment and the business cycle," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(1), pages 227-247, February.
    7. Magnus Lofstrom, 2011. "Low-skilled immigrant entrepreneurship," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 25-44, March.
    8. Maarten L. Buis, 2010. "Stata tip 87: Interpretation of interactions in nonlinear models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 10(2), pages 305-308, June.
    9. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, April.
    10. Sarah Bohn & Magnus Lofstrom & Steven Raphael, 2014. "Did the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act Reduce the State's Unauthorized Immigrant Population?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(2), pages 258-269, May.
    11. Chunbei Wang, 2019. "Tightened Immigration Policies and the Self‐Employment Dynamics of Mexican Immigrants," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 944-977, September.
    12. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July.
    13. George J. Borjas, 2007. "Mexican Immigration to the United States," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number borj06-1.
    14. Pia M. Orrenius & Madeline Zavodny, 2009. "The effects of tougher enforcement on the job prospects of recent Latin American immigrants," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 239-257.
    15. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769.
    16. Magnus Lofstrom & Chunbei Wang, 2009. "Mexican-American self-employment: a dynamic analysis of business ownership," Research in Labor Economics, in: Ethnicity and Labor Market Outcomes, pages 197-227, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    17. Lofstrom, Magnus & Wang, Chunbei, 2006. "Hispanic Self-Employment: A Dynamic Analysis of Business Ownership," IZA Discussion Papers 2101, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Robert W. Fairlie & Christopher Woodruff, 2007. "Mexican Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment in Mexico and the United States," NBER Chapters, in: Mexican Immigration to the United States, pages 123-158, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Chunbei Wang & Le Wang, 2012. "The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between natives and immigrants to the U.S," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 171-192, June.
    20. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Cynthia Bansak, 2012. "The Labor Market Impact of Mandated Employment Verification Systems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 543-548, May.
    21. repec:eme:rlec11:s0147-9121(2009)0000029010 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Matthew Freedman & Emily Owens & Sarah Bohn, 2018. "Immigration, Employment Opportunities, and Criminal Behavior," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 117-151, May.
    23. Lee, Myoung-jae, 2016. "Matching, Regression Discontinuity, Difference in Differences, and Beyond," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190258740.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Averett, Susan & Bansak, Cynthia & Condon, Grace & Dziadula, Eva, 2023. "The Gendered Impact of In-State Tuition Policies on Undocumented Immigrants' College Enrollment, Graduation, and Employment," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1359, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Brown, Xin, 2023. "Labor market impacts of state-level occupational licensing of undocumented immigrants," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(4), pages 478-496.
    3. Travis Wiseman, 2021. "Immigration and Baumolian Entrepreneurship in the United States," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 36(Fall 2021), pages 1-26.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & Arenas-Arroyo, Esther & Wang, Chunbei, 2020. "Is immigration enforcement shaping immigrant marriage patterns?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    2. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Magnus Lofstrom & Chunbei Wang, 2022. "Immigration Policy and the Rise of Self-Employment among Mexican Immigrants," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(5), pages 1189-1214, October.
    3. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & Arenas-Arroyo, Esther, 2021. "Immigration policy and fertility: Evidence from undocumented migrants in the U.S," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 274-297.
    4. Fairlie Robert & Woodruff Christopher M., 2010. "Mexican-American Entrepreneurship," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-44, February.
    5. Sari Pekkala Kerr & William R. Kerr, 2021. "Whose Job Is It Anyway? Coethnic Hiring in New US Ventures," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 86-127.
    6. Fairlie, Robert W. & Lofstrom, Magnus, 2013. "Immigration and Entrepreneurship," IZA Discussion Papers 7669, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Mary Lopez, 2021. "Recent changes in immigration policy and U.S. naturalization patterns," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 843-872, September.
    8. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & Arenas-Arroyo, Esther & Sevilla, Almudena, 2020. "Labor market impacts of states issuing of driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    9. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & Borra, Cristina & Wang, Chunbei, 2021. "Asian Discrimination in the Coronavirus Era: Implications for Business Formation and Survival," IZA Discussion Papers 14182, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Sedova, Barbora & Kalkuhl, Matthias, 2020. "Who are the climate migrants and where do they go? Evidence from rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    11. Magnus Lofstrom & Chunbei Wang, 2019. "Immigrants and entrepreneurship," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-85, June.
    12. Catalina Amuedo‐Dorantes & Mary J. Lopez, 2017. "The Hidden Educational Costs of Intensified Immigration Enforcement," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(1), pages 120-154, July.
    13. Peterson, Robert A. & Crittenden, Victoria L., 2020. "Exploring customer orientation as a marketing strategy of Mexican-American entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 139-148.
    14. Ciani Emanuele & Fisher Paul, 2019. "Dif-in-Dif Estimators of Multiplicative Treatment Effects," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, January.
    15. Magnus Lofstrom, 2011. "Low-skilled immigrant entrepreneurship," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 25-44, March.
    16. Hausmann, Ricardo & Nedelkoska, Ljubica, 2018. "Welcome home in a crisis: Effects of return migration on the non-migrants' wages and employment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 101-132.
    17. Colonnello, Stefano, 2017. "Internal governance and creditor governance: Evidence from credit default swaps," IWH Discussion Papers 6/2017, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    18. Brandyn F. Churchill & Andrew Dickinson & Taylor Mackay & Joseph J. Sabia, 2022. "The Effect of E-Verify Laws on Crime," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(5), pages 1294-1320, October.
    19. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Hiraga, Masako & Viet Nguyen, Cuong, 2022. "Childcare and maternal employment: Evidence from Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    20. Kate W. Strully & Robert Bozick & Ying Huang & Lane F. Burgette, 2020. "Employer Verification Mandates and Infant Health," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(6), pages 1143-1184, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mexican immigrants; Self-employment; 9/11; Tightened immigration policies; Necessity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:46:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1057_s41302-019-00142-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.