Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Papers in Innovation Studies,
Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research

No 2017/17: The Impact of Ethnic Communities on Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Sweden

Sam Tavassoli () and Michaela Trippl ()
Additional contact information
Sam Tavassoli: RMIT University, Postal: Australia
Michaela Trippl: University of Vienna, Postal: Austria

Abstract: This paper seeks to provide novel insights into the effects of ethnic communities on immigrants’ entrepreneurial activities. We investigate to what extent the decision of an employed immigrant to become an entrepreneur is associated with his or her embeddedness in ethnic networks in the host region. We capture such embeddedness through various mechanisms. Using longitudinal registered-data from Sweden and employing a Logit model, we find that merely being located in an ethnic community does not have an influence on immigrant entrepreneurship; rather what matters is being located in ethnic communities that have a high share of entrepreneurs themselves.

Keywords: Immigrants; entrepreneurship; ethnic communities; embeddedness; social capital

JEL-codes: D83; J61; M13

35 pages, October 12, 2017

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201717_tavassoli_et_al.pdf PDF-file 

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