Mixed Economy in the Entrepreneurial Sphere? Ethnic Enterprise in the Wholesale and Retail Trades in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States

Abstract

This study examines two competing views suggested by the literature on ethnic enterprise: (1) The business activities of groups that have abundant class resources are compartmentalized into niches or enclaves in which entrepreneurs from these groups monopolize the rewards of their superior assets through closure or hegemony; (2) The business activities of such advantaged groups will enhance the business activities of groups that have limited class resources when porous ethnic boundaries give rise to a mixed economy of mutually beneficial inter-group relationships. Regression analyses of Census data on retail and wholesale enterprise in the late nineteenth-century United States accord with the first view. Class-resource-advantaged groups (e.g., native whites) retained the benefits of wholesale entrepreneurship within their own respective ethnic economies and were not involved in mutually beneficial relationships with class-resource-disadvantaged groups that had high (e.g., Russian Jews) or low levels of retail entrepreneurship (e.g., the Irish).