Lose to win: entrepreneurship of returned migrants in China

This paper explores the relationship between rural to urban migration and entrepreneurship in China. We compare entrepreneurship between return migrants who used to work in a province other than their home province and migrants whose work experience is limited to within their home province. Migrants who leave their home province lose rooted social networks and immediate support from relatives and friends, but might gain new social networks, human capital and financial capital, which eventually enable them to enter entrepreneurship more easily. The factors tested for their association with entrepreneurship include a range of individual characteristics, human and social capital, financial capital, city fixed effects and industry fixed effects. Significant heterogeneous patterns across regions suggest the active eastern market is more conducive to entrepreneurship than the sluggish western market. Return migrants in the East accumulated more human capital and social capital, have more self-financed fund and are more likely to start a business at the same time.