Research Economic Seminar: Return migration and self-employment: Is there a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ effect?

With reference to Lazear’s Jack-of-all-Trades Hypothesis, I examine whether migrants are more likely to choose self-employment upon return because of the diverse work experience they gained abroad. The endogeneity between migration, human capital investment and self-employment is addressed by exploiting plausibly exogenous cohort and regional variation in the decision to migrate in the context of Egypt, and parental labor market information. Return migrants’ higher propensity to be and to generate jobs as self-employed is shown to proceed from participating in significantly more occupations over their work history than non-migrants. In line with Lazear’s framework, estimates confirm that entrepreneurship can be learned, and that exposure to multiple occupations matters for being and creating jobs as self-employed.