TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fairlie, Robert
AU  - Woodruff, Christopher
TI  - Mexican Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment in Mexico and the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11527
PY  - 2005
Y2  - August 2005
DO  - 10.3386/w11527
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11527
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11527.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert W. Fairlie
Department of Economics
Engineering 2 Building
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Tel: 831/459-3332
E-Mail: rfairlie@ucsc.edu

Christopher Woodruff
Queen Elizabeth House
University of Oxford
OX1 3TB
UK
E-Mail: christopher.woodruff@qeh.ox.ac.uk
M1  - published as Robert W. Fairlie, Christopher Woodruff. "Mexican Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment in Mexico and the United States ," in George J. Borjas, editor, "Mexican Immigration to the United States" University of Chicago Press (2007)

AB  - Nearly a quarter of Mexico's workforce is self employed. But in the U.S. rates of self employment among Mexican Americans are only 6 percent, about half the rate among non-Latino whites. Using data from the Mexican and U.S. population census, we show that neither industrial composition nor differences in the age and education of Mexican born populations residing in Mexico and the U.S. accounts for the differences in the self employment rates in the two countries. Within the U.S., however, the data show self employment rates are much higher in ethnic enclaves. In PUMAS with a high percentage of residents of Latino origin, rates of self employment are comparable to rates among non-Latino whites. The data also indicate that the lack of English language ability and the lack of legal status among Mexican American immigrants helps account for their lower rates of self employment.
ER  -