Very happy that @J_HumanResource has accepted "Social Networks, Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship", joint with Martin Mandorff. Immigrants are quite entrepreneurial … we study a lesser understood fact: that ethnic groups tend to specialize into tight sectors

Example: starting with a fascination in 1975 of actress Tippi Hendren's nails at a refugee camp, Vietnamese today dominate the nail care industry … several decades later most every common surname in Texas for a licensed manicurist is South Asian …

Moreover, ethnic entrepr. specialization is present abroad and throughout history. We model small, isolated social groups that interact extensive among themselves but work in a broader economy without discrimination. Others beat us to the setting...

As self-employment in trades like Gujarati motels & Vietnamese nail care relies on skill acquisition/mentoring, info sharing, consolidated buying, startup capital, etc. ... these tight groups can use family gatherings, religious functions, etc. to reinforce their trade

Empirically, the average immigrant group is more than 8x concentrated for self-employment than would be anticipated at random

Basic OLS confirms that smaller and more isolated groups (measured via in-marriage among child arrivals) show greater entrepreneurial concertation.

[Will next skip across months of time and 20+ tables of panels, IV, and all that]

My favorite graph, thanks to Referee #2 … the model predicts that industry specialization follows a pattern … smaller groups->smaller sectors, larger->larger …the cumulative distribution of self-empl with smallest industries on left, largest on right:

Immigrants are a quarter of US entrepreneurs, so this clustering is important ... at least 1/3 of US motels are owned by Gujarati Indians!

Many opportunities for future work … industry impacts, assimilation, etc.

Paper Link: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/1-KM-Networks-Full-Nov20_62c7381a-bda4-457c-8135-b1d688f6df6f.pdf