Self-Employment and Migration / Samuele Giambra.

Format:

Book

Government document

Author/Creator:

Giambra, Samuele.

Contributor:

Giambra, Samuele.

McKenzie, David.

Series:

Policy research working papers.

World Bank e-Library.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Employment and Unemployment.

Internal Migration.

International Migration.

Labor Markets.

Poverty Reduction.

Randomized Experiment.

Self Employment.

Social Protections and Labor.

Local Subjects:

Employment and Unemployment.

Internal Migration.

International Migration.

Labor Markets.

Poverty Reduction.

Randomized Experiment.

Self Employment.

Social Protections and Labor.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (72 pages)

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : The World Bank, 2019.

System Details:

data file

Summary:

There is a widespread policy view that a lack of job opportunities at home is a key reason for migration, accompanied by suggestions of the need to spend more on creating these opportunities to reduce migration. Self-employment is widespread in poor countries, and faced with a lack of existing jobs, providing more opportunities for people to start businesses is a key policy option. But empirical evidence to support this idea is slight, and economic theory offers several reasons why the self-employed may be more likely to migrate. This paper puts together panel surveys from eight countries to descriptively examine the relationship between migration and self-employment, finding that the self-employed are indeed less likely to migrate than wage workers or the unemployed. The paper then analyzes seven randomized experiments that increased self-employment, and finds that their causal impacts on migration are negative on average, but often small in magnitude.